“How will this do?” he demanded. “Agony Column of The Times. Unless owner of valuable closed car receives an abject apology from each of the occupants of the coupé which at a moment when they were otherwise engaged was driven across his path, thereby almost occasioning a serious accident, he will publish the time and place at which the incident occurred, together with the number of the offending car.”
Virginia Peruke sat up, with a mischievous light in her eyes.
“I should simply love,” she said, “to see his apology. And yet,” she continued gently, “I should hate him to be all upset. You see, if ever he’s worried he always comes to me. And he couldn’t come to me about this. And—and I should feel awfully guilty and dreadfully mean.”
“I don’t want her to come unbuttoned,” said Roger musingly. “I couldn’t bear that. But I’m out to stop the rot—without involvin’ ourselves.”
Virginia interlaced ten rosy fingers.
“I don’t quite know what I want,” she said, as though thinking aloud. “Yes, I do. I want Derry back—terribly. Yet I want him to be smacked—not hard, just enough to sting. But I couldn’t enjoy his smacking unless I was smacked too. Can you ever begin to understand? You see, we ought to be involved—if justice is to be done.”
“That’s right,” said Roger. “You’ve assaulted the nail. My tail ought to be twisted, but not by Rosemary. Rosemary ought to be gingered but not by me. What we all want is a public executioner.”
Virginia nodded.
“That’s the idea,” she said. “Someone to clear the air. I don’t think we’ll need that notice. Any way, to-morrow we’ll know. And if this affair’s going strong, you can shove it in. But I don’t believe it is. If I love an’ cherish Derry, I think he’ll come back. And Rosemary too. What’s beginning to break my heart is that things won’t be the same. I’d jump at a general confession, but if they didn’t join in, it’d only make matters worse. If only something would happen to clear the air.”
“The god in the car,” said Roger, nodding his head. “That’s the wallah we want. You know. The Greeks were poets all right, but they couldn’t write plays. They could mess up their characters’ lives, but when the time came they couldn’t straighten them out. And as it was a case—the audience bein’ strict—of a small hemlock or a happy endin’, in the last act they always roped in a god on board a truck who made the garden lovely before bringin’ the curtain down.”