“I saw one of them. There was an echo. Did it get on her nerves?”
“I couldn’t worry her overmuch with questions. She’ll have plenty to go through in the witness-box. They don’t bear thinking about, these next weeks. I wish the Marabar Hills and all they contain were at the bottom of the sea. Evening after evening one saw them from the club, and they were just a harmless name. . . . Yes, we start already.” For a visiting card was brought; Vakil Mahmoud Ali, legal adviser to the prisoner, asked to be allowed to see him. McBryde sighed, gave permission, and continued: “I heard some more from Miss Derek—she is an old friend of us both and talks freely; well—her account is that you went off to locate the camp, and almost at once she heard stones falling on the Kawa Dol and saw Miss Quested running straight down the face of a precipice. Well. She climbed up a sort of gully to her, and found her practically done for—her helmet off——”
“Was a guide not with her?” interrupted Fielding.
“No. She had got among some cactuses. Miss Derek saved her life coming just then—she was beginning to fling herself about. She helped her down to the car. Miss Quested couldn’t stand the Indian driver, cried, ‘Keep him away’—and it was that that put our friend on the track of what had happened. They made straight for our bungalow, and are there now. That’s the story as far as I know it yet. She sent the driver to join you. I think she behaved with great sense.”
“I suppose there’s no possibility of my seeing Miss Quested?” he asked suddenly.
“I hardly think that would do. Surely.”
“I was afraid you’ld say that. I should very much like to.”
“She is in no state to see anyone. Besides, you don’t know her well.”
“Hardly at all. . . . But you see I believe she’s under some hideous delusion, and that that wretched boy is innocent.”
The policeman started in surprise, and a shadow passed over his face, for he could not bear his dispositions to be upset. “I had no idea that was in your mind,” he said, and looked for support at the signed deposition, which lay before him.