You and I together on the King’s Highway,
The blue skies above us, and below the shining sea;
There’s many a road to travel, but it’s this road for me.”
You must have ridden this road with an understanding heart and the arm of God around you to know the exact degree of disappointment that swelled in Linda’s heart when she answered the telephone early Saturday morning and heard Donald Whiting’s strained voice speaking into it. He was talking breathlessly in eager, boyish fashion.
“Linda, I am in a garage halfway downtown,” he was saying, “and it looks to me as if to save my soul I couldn’t reach you before noon. I have had the darnedest luck. Our Jap got sick last week and he sent a new man to take his place. There wasn’t a thing the matter with our car when I drove it in Friday night. This morning Father wanted to use it on important business, and it wouldn’t run. He ordered me to tinker it up enough to get it to the shop. I went at it and when it would go, I started. You can imagine the clip I was going, and the thing went to pieces. I don’t know yet how it comes that I saved my skin. I’m pretty badly knocked out, but I’ll get there by noon if it’s a possible thing.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Linda, fervently hoping that the ache in her throat would not tincture her voice.
It was half-past eleven when Donald came. Linda could not bring herself to give up the sea that day. She found it impossible to drive the King’s Highway. It seemed equally impossible not to look on the face of the ocean, so she compromised by skirting Santa Monica Bay, and taking the foothill road she ran it to the north end of the beach drive. When they had spread their blankets on the sand, finished their lunch and were resting, Linda began to question Donald about what had happened. She wanted to know how long Whitings’ gardener had been in their employ; if they knew where he lived and about his family; if they knew who his friends were, or anything concerning him. She inquired about the man who had taken his place, and wanted most particularly to know what the garage men had found the trouble with a car that ran perfectly on Friday night, and broke down in half a dozen different places on Saturday morning. Finally Donald looked at her, laughingly quizzical.
“Linda,” he said, “you’re no nerve specialist and no naturalist. You’re the cross examiner for the plaintiff. What are you trying to get at? Make out a case against Yogo Sani?”
“Of course it’s all right,” said Linda, watching a distant pelican turn head down and catapult into the sea. “It has to be all right, but you must admit that it looks peculiar. How have you been getting along this week?”
Donald waved his hand in the direction of a formation of stone the size of a small house.