Alma was still in the parlour, the gun gripped tight in her hand, a look of fiendish resolution on her face.
“You must help me to get Digby into the house,” she said.
“Where is he?”
Mirabelle pointed, and the two women, returning to the man, half lifted, half dragged him back to the hall. Laying him down on the brick floor, the girl went in search of clean linen. The kitchen, which was also the drying place for Alma’s more intimate laundry, supplied all that she needed. Whilst Alma watched unmoved the destruction of her wardrobe, the girl bathed the wound and the frightened nurse (who had disappeared at the first shot) applied a rough dressing. The wound was an ugly one, and the man showed no signs of recovering consciousness.
“We shall have to send Mary into Gloucester for an ambulance,” said Mirabelle. “We can’t send nurse—she doesn’t know the way.”
“Mary,” said Alma calmly, “is at this moment having hysterics in the larder. I’ll harness the dog-cart and go myself. But where is the other man?”
Mirabelle shook her head.
“I don’t like to think what has happened to him,” she said. “Now, Alma, do you think we can get him into the drawing-room?”
Together they lifted the heavy figure and staggered with it into the pretty little room, laying him at last upon the settee under the window.
“He can rest there till we get the ambulance,” began Mirabelle, and a chuckle behind her made her turn with a gasp.