“Sorry I spoke, old man,” Hilliard went on. “Don’t mind answering.”
Merriman came to a decision.
“Not at all” he answered slowly. “I’m a fool to make any mystery of it. I’ll tell you. There is a girl there, the manager’s daughter. I met her in the lane when I was following the lorry, and asked her about petrol. She was frightfully decent; came back with me and told her father what I wanted, and all that. But, Hilliard, here’s the point. She knew! There’s something, and she knows it too. She got quite scared when that driver fixed me with his eyes, and tried to get me away, and she was quite unmistakably relieved when the incident passed. Then later her father suggested she should see me to the road, and on the way I mentioned the thing—said I was afraid I had upset the driver somehow—and she got embarrassed at once, told me the man was shell-shocked, implying that he was queer, and switched off on to another subject so pointedly I had to let it go at that.”
Hilliard’s eyes glistened.
“Quite a good little mystery,” he said. “I suppose the man couldn’t have been a relation, or even her fiancee?”
“That occurred to me, and it is possible. But I don’t think so. I believe she wanted to try to account for his manner, so as to prevent my smelling a rat.”
“And she did not account for it?”
“Perhaps she did, but again I don’t think so. I have a pretty good knowledge of shell-shock, as you know, and it didn’t look like it to me. I don’t suggest she wasn’t speaking the truth. I mean that this particular action didn’t seem to be so caused.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Merriman continued:
“There was another thing which might bear in the same direction, or again it may only be my imagination—I’m not sure of it. I told you the manager appeared just in the middle of the little scene, but I forgot to tell you that the driver went up to him and said something in a low tone, and the manager started and looked at me and seemed annoyed. But it was very slight and only for a second; I would have noticed nothing only for what went before. He was quite polite and friendly immediately after, and I may have been mistaken and imagined the whole thing.”