Who, but one person in all the world, could have called to him there?
He knew that it was impossible, even if Bessie Harlan were indeed a prisoner inside the old château, that she should have witnessed his approach, or that she should have recognized him from her aerie window, even if she had discovered the approach of two pedestrians before the gathering darkness had hidden them from view. But he explained the seemingly inexplicable phenomenon in quite another way than that.
“If Bessie is a prisoner there,” he reasoned to himself, “she believes absolutely that Max and I will come to her rescue, sooner or later. If she is a prisoner there, she is confined in a room which overlooks the sea—a room in this very tower, in fact; and if all that be true, that call of hers was simply a wail of impatient waiting and longing, called out by her to the heavens, the clouds, the sea, the wide, wide world. Not in the hope that it would literally be heard, perhaps, but, nevertheless, a call to us to hasten.”
Several moments he waited, wondering if there would be a repetition of the call; and then, when one came, he wondered again if he should reply to it. His better judgment told him not to do so, and so presently he turned away to pursue his course around the castle.
But he discovered, presently, that he had been deceived in his surmises that it would be possible for him to skirt the tower between it and the water, and, at last, satisfied that he could not do so, he turned back again over the course he had come.
He was not long in arriving at the spot where he had left Kane, but he did not pause there. After hesitating just one instant in order to get his bearings properly, he started forward again toward the place where they had agreed to meet.
When he arrived there, however, Maxwell Kane was not there, and the detective could discover no trace of him in any direction. He waited a few moments, thinking that something might have detained him, and that he had, therefore, not yet arrived, although he knew all the time that nothing of an ordinary nature could have done so.
There were no impediments in the way between the spot where they had parted and where they agreed to meet.
Nick had just traversed every inch of it, and he had met with no obstacle of any kind, nor had he seen a sign of life or a light anywhere.