II. THE MURDER NEAR THE FALCON’S NEST

“I call it perfectly dreadful of those men!” Helen Thurwell exclaimed suddenly. “They’re more than an hour late, and I’m desperately hungry!”

“It is rank ingratitude!” Rachel Kynaston sighed. “I positively cannot sit still and look at that luncheon any longer. Groves, give me a biscuit.”

They were both seated on low folding-chairs out on the open moorland, only a few yards away from the edge of the rugged line of cliffs against which, many hundreds of feet below, the sea was breaking with a low monotonous murmur. Close behind them, on a level stretch of springy turf, a roughly improvised table, covered with a cloth of dazzling whiteness, was laden with deep bowls of lobster salad,pâtes de foie gras, chickens, truffled turkeys, piles of hothouse fruit, and many other delicacies peculiarly appreciated atal fresco symposia; and, a little further away still, under the shade of a huge yellow gorse bush, were several ice-pails, in which were reposing many rows of gold-foiled bottles. The warm sun was just sufficiently tempered by a mild heather-scented breeze, and though it flashed gayly upon the glass and silver, and danced across the bosom of the blue water below, its heat was more pleasant than oppressive. The two women who sat there looked delightfully cool. Helen Thurwell especially, in her white holland