“Ought I——” he hacked anew at indecision. The puzzle existed for him as surely as though it were wrought in bits of metal, and sold in a box for fourpence-halfpenny. Deb was missing; his name was mixed up in it; ought the Marcuses to be told what he knew about that night—(hiatus)—at Seaview? Was he the right person to tell them? These were all facts. The hiatus was slurred over unperceived ... it was such a tiny hiatus. Winifred Potter was responsible for it, by being fat, and yawning, and talking in that slow flaccid way of hers.... But it was an absorbing problem! And underneath a top layer of recently-manufactured tragedy, Cliffe’s genuine nature was genuinely concerned about Deb, and the circumstances which attended her flight from home, and his own possible share in the matter. Was any course of action expected of him—not officially by her family, but in the way of ordinary decency? An offer of marriage? Surely not! but he ought to go and look for her——
In the river?
Who said she was in the river? truculently. Winifred Potter. She had talked about dragging it ... nasty idea! Anyway, how did she know? She was too fat to know anything—just a mischief-maker—And then again—ought the Ledburys to be told?... Would it be worse for them to wait from hour to hour and from week to week, hope slowly drained away—or be dealt the sudden blow?
Not by him in any case. Not by the man who ought to have married Deb.
His entranced mind, pacing the hiatus like a bridge between fact and fancy, took him out of the house and half-way down the street before he even realized that he had left the room. And he had completely forgotten to say good-bye to Winifred.
... Presently she picked irresolutely at the edges of “The Sin of Lady Jacynth.” She wondered if it would be wrong to finish it; like—like raising the blinds too soon after a funeral. But—it was not as if she had known Deb any better than Jacynth. And the solution to that lady’s sin was so handy ... one did not have to go out and drag for it, or even move from the sofa....
Winifred did not move from the sofa, not when the front-door bell was violently pealed—again—and several times again. She went on reading. After about six minutes, the lodger on the third floor, who had previously admitted Cliffe, came tramping wearily down the stairs again to let in Gillian Sherwood.
“So you are at home, you lazy young pug. And awake?”
“Have you lost your key again?” Winnie reprimanded her.