“Surely you’re exaggerating? I don’t mean that you’re doing it with any intention of frightening me, but there isn’t any danger to us?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got a queer feeling—had it all morning. How far is the nearest house from here?”
“Not half a mile away,” she said.
“You’re on the ’phone?”
She nodded.
“I’m scared, maybe. I’ll just go out into the road and have a look round. I wish that fellow would come back,” he added fretfully.
He walked slowly up the garden path and stood for a moment leaning over the gate. As he did so, he heard the rattle and asthmatic wheezing of an ancient car, and saw a tradesman’s trolley come round a corner of Heavytree Lane. Its pace grew slower as it got nearer to the house, and opposite the gate it stopped altogether. The driver getting down with a curse, lifted up the battered tin bonnet, and, groping under the seat, brought out a long spanner. Then, swift as thought, he half turned and struck at Digby’s head. The girl heard the sickening impact, saw the watcher drop limply to the path, and in another second she had slammed the door and thrust home the bolts.
She was calm; the hand that took the revolver from the hall-table did not tremble.
“Alma!” she called, and Alma came running downstairs.
“What on earth——?” she began, and then saw the pistol in Mirabelle’s hands.