The Man from the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

naïvely astonished.
    “They look no more than that – until they’re cut.”
    “I see.” She was like a child whom some prosaic fact betrays in the legitimate expectation of pleasure. “Where do you take them to?”
    “Hatton Garden. All diamonds go there.”
    “So they do.” She accepted this sagely. “But they will come back to you later – I mean the same ones?”
    “Yes, I shall have further dealings with them later on.”
    “They’ll be for sale?” She hesitated. “I could perhaps buy one or two – just by way of remembering this funny night?”
    “It could be managed. Perhaps we might meet and discuss it some time.” The stranger’s tone continued to be conventional – so that Cranston supposed him quite unsurprised. Cranston himself felt his head swimming. He had good reason to know that Caryl’s mind could very queerly veer about. But this freak was unbelievable. Or was it? She was silly about gems, and there was a bit of an explanation in that. Perhaps – he found himself considering this quite dispassionately – she was inevitably silly about men who rose gleaming from the sea in the small hours or presented any similar bizarre interest. But of more certain relevance was the fascination she found in funk. The man from the sea was frightening, and there was a good nine-tenths of her which this whole encounter prompted to mere flight. But some tiny remaining component wanted to stay and dabble…like this. Here on the familiar beach she had enjoyed her fill of one sort of delicious apprehensiveness. And now – perhaps without awareness of what drove her – she was reaching out to the man from the sea for another.
    And Cranston’s impatience was suddenly acute. A pair of diamond cufflinks would make a nice Christmas present for Alex. He heard the low pleasantry enunciate itself inside his head; and although he had no impulse actually to speak the words he flushed at them. It was true that everything had turned abominable. For a moment he believed that his consciousness of this was affecting him physically – had set a pulse throbbing at his temple. Then he realised that he was hearing, once more, something far away. The throb was from a steamer out in the ocean channel. And it had begun quite suddenly. The engines that had stopped half an hour ago were in action again.
    The sound cut Caryl short. Perhaps the image of the invisible ship, variously manned and purposively moving, brought the outer world in its threatening aspect more sharply home to her. She turned away from the man from the sea – and a last quick scrutiny of his stripped body was perhaps only to tell her which of Alex’s clothes would fit. “Dicky,” she whispered, “ – till tomorrow!” Then she vanished among the rocks. A minute later there was a glimpse of her – all tight slacks and voluminous sweater – scrambling clear of them and making for the cliff. The two men were quite silent. Only when the slow sea gave its next soft sigh their eyes met. They might have been acknowledging something appropriate in the sound.
     
    “We’ll give her twenty minutes.” Cranston spoke prosaically. “For time, I think, isn’t a worry. The nearest railway-station is about five miles up the glen. And there will be nothing odd about your strolling up to it in time for the first train.”
    The man from the sea nodded. “Nothing at all – provided the clothes are a reasonable fit.”
    “Blair’s things will fit you, all right.”
    “Blair? Your – ?”
    “Drop that, please.” Cranston was surprised to hear his own voice tremble with anger. “You understand what – what you’ve seen, very well.”
    “I don’t altogether understand you .” The man from the sea spoke soberly. “Are you, I wonder, just a very great young puritan? Or is there something more?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.” Even as he uttered the words, Cranston realised that they were the first lie he had spoken that night. And on this it came