Bundle jumped out and ran back. She had never yet run over anything more important than a stray hen. The fact that the accident was hardly her fault did not weigh with her at the minute. The man had seemed drunk, but drunk or not, she had killed him. She was quite sure she had killed him. Her heart beat sickeningly in great pounding thumps, sounding right up in her ears.
She knelt down by the prone figure and turned him very gingerly over. He neither groaned nor moaned. He was young, she saw, rather a pleasant-faced young man, well dressed and wearing a small toothbrush moustache.
There was no external mark of injury that she could see, but she was quite positive that he was either dead or dying. His eyelids flickered and the eyes half opened. Piteous eyes, brown and suffering, like a dog's. He seemed to be struggling to speak. Bundle bent right over.
"Yes," she said. "Yes?"
There was something he wanted to say, she could see that. Wanted to say badly. And she couldn't help him, couldn't do anything.
At last the words came, a mere sighing breath:
"Seven Dials ... tell...."
"Yes," said Bundle again. It was a name he was trying to get out—trying with all his failing strength. "Yes. Who am I to tell?"
"Tell ... Jimmy Thesiger...." He got it out at last, and then suddenly, his head fell back and his body went limp.
Bundle sat back on her heels, shivering from head to foot. She could never have imagined that anything so awful could have happened to her. He was dead—and she had killed him.