“Yes. Why?”
“Then,” said Mr. Priestley very solemnly, “my dear Miss Spettiman—er—Merrigrew—er——”
“Won’t you call me Laura?” said his companion with timid deference, but not unhelpfully.
“Thank you, my dear Laura. Yes. Then as I was saying, my dear Laura—er—Laura, this is very serious indeed. Don’t you see? They’ll know who took that car, and I am afraid your name is bound to crop up in connection with the crime. With the accident, I should say.”
“But they won’t know it was taken down to Duffley.”
“Won’t they?” said Mr. Priestley unhappily. “I’m afraid it may come out. I believe the police are very clever indeed at tracing things. Probably they are on the look out for its number already. We must leave nothing to chance. We must abandon it by the road-side.”
“Oh!” said Laura, who did not at all wish to abandon by the road-side George’s perfectly good and very expensive car.
They stared at each other.
“This is very serious,” said Mr. Priestley again, and looked so concerned that Laura very nearly told him not to worry because there wasn’t a word of truth in her whole story. The number of times that Laura was brought to the brink of revelation, and the number of times she was jerked back from it just in time were becoming as the sands of the sea, countless.
This time it was the landlady who assisted in the jerking process, choosing that moment to enter the room with an armful of newspapers.