“She said, ‘Where is she now, Steve?’ And I said, ‘At the movies. She probably met someone on the road who gave her a lift; or else she decided to walk straight there, as she knew that the Conroys’ car would be crowded.’ She said, ‘She’s not at the movies. She’s waiting for Pat in the gardener’s cottage.’ I said, ‘And has Pat gone to meet her?’ And she said, ‘No, this time he hasn’t gone to meet her.’ I said, ‘What makes you think that?’ Sue said, ‘I don’t think it; I know it.’ I said, ‘Oh, yes, he was going to Dallases to play poker, wasn’t he?’ And after a moment she said, ‘Yes, that’s where he said he was going. I happened to know that there’s been a slip in their plan to meet to-night.’
“Then she told me that she believed they were planning to run away, and that the reason she had wanted to see me was to tell me that she would never give Pat a divorce as long as she lived, and she thought if I told Mimi that before it was too late it might stop her.
“We’d reached the River Road by this time, and were well on our way to Lakedale, and I said, ‘Sue, we’ve talked enough nonsense for to-night; I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’re running low on gas, and when we get to Lakedale we’ll get some, turn around and head back for Rosemont. We can see whether the movies are out as we go through the village, and if they aren’t, you can come back to our house and wait for a minute or so until Mimi gets there. Then you can put the whole thing up to her and take your punishment like a lady when you find what a goose you’ve been. Is that a bargain?’ And she said, ‘All right, that’s a bargain.’
“We’d been driving pretty slowly, so that it was after nine when we got into Lakedale; there were two or three people ahead of us at the gas station—Saturday night, you know—and Sue was very thirsty, so we asked the man at the gas pump if he could get her some water, and he did. I noticed him particularly, because he had the reddest hair that I’ve ever seen on a human being. We were at the station about ten minutes, and I looked at my watch just as we left. It said twenty minutes past nine.”
“Was your watch correct, Mr. Bellamy?”
“Absolutely! I check it every day at the station.”
“How long a drive is it from Lakedale to Rosemont?”
“Under half an hour—it’s around nine miles.”
“And to Orchards from Lakedale?”
“It’s close to twelve—Orchards is about three miles north of Rosemont.”