“Oh, do go and fetch it. Some one might bag it.”
“They’d wish they hadn’t—before they had ridden it a hundred yards,” he answered with a laugh. “They’d come about the most complete spill they’d ever come in their lives.”
“Why? How?” she asked, mystified.
“There’s a dodge in it that would produce that result with any other than myself mounting it. Incidentally, there have been two attempts made at annexing it—with the effect described.”
“That’s a very wonderful machine of yours,” she said. “The other day—only it was months ago—you told us it was unpuncturable—now it seems it’s unrideable, for any one but its owner.”
“Yes—it is rather wonderful, isn’t it—Hallo?” as he became alive to the greetings of the kitten, which was rubbing against his legs and purring. “Why, this little beauty is hardly any bigger than it was, and it ought to be nearly full grown by this time.”
“Yes, and aren’t I just glad too, that it’s always going to stay small. I was afraid it wouldn’t,” she answered, picking it up and replacing it upon her shoulder. “But you’re not pressed for time, are you? Uncle Seward will be back by quite an early afternoon train, and he’d he awfully disgusted if he missed you—especially as you’re going away.”
To Helston Varne this invitation was wholly alluring—he wondered that it should prove so much so. And what a strange turn the situation had taken. He had originally come to these parts with—professionally—hostile intent towards the occupier of Heath Hover; now, any discoveries that he might make—whatever their nature—and this he would repeat to himself with emphasis, he would certainly use to the aid and advantage of that individual, if possible. He would have been only too glad to arrive at a solution, as a matter of purely professional interest only—but with no intention of using it by a hair’s breadth against his new-found friend, as to which he had already begun to put Nashby off the scent by such modicum of suspicion as we heard him express to that painstaking officer. Now he answered:
“If you can do with me for all that time, Miss Seward, I shall be only too delighted. What a lovely day it is. Won’t you get on your bicycle and show me some of the country I haven’t seen? We could pick up lunch at some wayside inn, and get back in time to meet your uncle.”
“I’d be delighted, but my bike happens to be out of commission. It wants a thorough overhauling in fact. Let’s have a walk instead. It’s no end jolly just meandering on, winding in and out, now in a jolly wood—now through a field, or by a pond—in fact, just anywhere you like to go. We can get back here by lunch-time. Yes, that’ll be the very thing. I’ll go up and get a hat—I won’t be a sec.”