“Does she know what it is she drives with her on that big car through the black and lonely night?”
“Like a drink?” asked Deede Dawson.
Dunn shook his head, and it came to him that he did not attack Deede Dawson and force the truth from him because he dared not, because he was afraid, because he feared what the answer might be.
“There's a tool-shed at the bottom of the garden,” Deede Dawson said to him. “You can sleep there, tonight. You'll find some sacks you can make a bed of.”
Without a word in reply Dunn turned and stumbled away. He felt very tired—physically exhausted—and the idea of a bed, even of sacks in an outhouse, became all at once extraordinarily attractive.
He found the place without difficulty, and, making a pile of the sacks, flung himself down on them and was asleep almost at once. But almost as promptly he awoke again, for he had dreamed of Ella driving her car through the night towards some strange peril from which in his dream he was trying frantically and ineffectively to save her when he awoke.
So it was all through the night.
His utter and complete exhaustion compelled him to sleep, and every time some fresh, fantastic dream in which Ella and the huge motor-car and the dreadful burden she had with her always figured, awoke him with a fresh start.
But towards morning he fell into a heavy sleep from which presently he awoke to find it broad daylight and Deede Dawson standing on the threshold of the shed with his perpetually smiling lips and his cold, unsmiling eyes.
“Well, my man; had a good sleep?” he said.