“By the way, what made you so late to-night?” questioned Leslie, suddenly changing the subject. “I thought you’d never come!”
“Oh, I meant to tell you right away, but all this put it out of my head. When I got home after the ride, I found only Father there. He said Ted had been away most of the afternoon. He’d gone down to the village after some new fishing-tackle and hadn’t come back yet. I started in and got supper, and still he didn’t appear. Then we began to get worried and ’phoned down to Smithson’s in the village where they sell tackle, to see if he could be there. They said he had been, early in the afternoon, but they hadn’t seen him since. We called up every other place he could possibly be, but nowhere was he to be found. I was beginning to be quite upset about him—when in he walked!
“He was very quiet and uncommunicative and wouldn’t explain why he was so late. And then, presently, he said in a very casual manner that his hand was hurt. And when he showed it to us, I almost screamed, for it was very badly hurt—all torn and lacerated. He had it wrapped in his handkerchief, but we made him undo it, and I bathed it and Father put iodine on, and I fixed him a sling to wear it in. The thing about it was that he didn’t seem to want to tell us how it happened. Said he met a friend who invited him to ride in their car and had taken him for a long drive. And on the way home they’d had a little breakdown, and Ted had tried to help fix it and had got his hand caught in the machinery somehow.
“But he was plainly very anxious not to be questioned about it. And Father says that Ted is old enough now to be trusted, and should not be compelled to speak when he doesn’t wish to, and so nothing more was said. But it all seemed a little strange to me, for, honestly, I don’t know a single soul in this village that Ted knows who owns a car, or any other of our friends who would be likely to be around these parts just now. They’re all home at their schools or colleges. When I asked him whose car he was in, he just glared at me and said I always did ask too many impertinent questions! But I can’t make much out of it, and I hate any more puzzles to think about.”
Leslie, however, could cast no light on this new problem; and she was somewhat more interested, moreover, in their other puzzle. But as she was about to revert to that subject again, Phyllis suddenly interrupted:
“Oh, by the way, soon after I got home, Aunt Sally ’phoned to ask if we were back from the ride yet. And when I said we’d been back some time, she said she was quite worried because Eileen had not yet appeared and it was late and dark. I said perhaps she had stopped somewhere in the village, as she had left us a good while before. Quite a little later, just before Ted got in, Aunt Sally ’phoned again to say that Eileen had just arrived. She’d had some trouble with the car after she left us and had to stop and fix it. I wonder what was the matter there!”
Suddenly Leslie clutched her friend’s arm. “Phyllis Kelvin, are we going crazy, or is there some strange connection in all this? Can’t you see?—Ted late and mixed up with some breakdown—Eileen late and had trouble with the machinery,—and with my own eyes I saw some one jump into her car!—Could it, could it be possible that person was—Ted?”
Phyllis stared at her as if she thought Leslie certainly had “gone crazy.” “There’s not the slightest chance in the world!” she declared positively. “Why, only last night, when I was explaining to Ted about Eileen and how we’d become friends, all he said was: ‘Well, so you’ve taken up with some other dame, have you! Might as well not have brought you down here, all the good you are to us, this time. Haven’t been fishing with us more than twice since we came! Whoever this Eileen is, don’t for goodness sake have her around here!’ If he’d known her, he certainly would have shown it in some way. He acted utterly disgusted with me for having made her acquaintance!”
“That may all be true, but it doesn’t prove that he is not acquainted with her,” stubbornly affirmed Leslie.
And Phyllis was driven to acknowledge the force of the argument!