After breakfast Scaife got from a house-agent a key for the gates
of the staircases on the Ruff. I walked with him along the sands,
and sat down in a nook of the cliffs while he investigated the half-
dozen of them. I didn't want to be seen, but the place at this hour
was quite deserted, and all the time I was on that beach I saw
nothing but the sea-gulls.
It took him more than an hour to do the job, and when I saw
him coming towards me, conning a bit of paper, I can tell you my
heart was in my mouth. Everything depended, you see, on my
guess proving right.
He read aloud the number of steps in the different stairs. 'Thirty-
four, thirty-five, thirty-nine, forty-two, forty-seven,' and 'twenty-
one' where the cliffs grew lower. I almost got up and shouted.
We hurried back to the town and sent a wire to MacGillivray. I
wanted half a dozen men, and I directed them to divide themselves
among different specified hotels. Then Scaife set out to prospect
the house at the head of the thirty-nine steps.
He came back with news that both puzzled and reassured me.
The house was called Trafalgar Lodge, and belonged to an old
gentleman called Appleton--a retired stockbroker, the house-agent
said. Mr Appleton was there a good deal in the summer time, and
was in residence now--had been for the better part of a week.
Scaife could pick up very little information about him, except that
he was a decent old fellow, who paid his bills regularly, and was
always good for a fiver for a local charity.
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