"Oh, is he dead? Oh, whatever shall we do?" cried Janet distractedly.
"Stop that screeching, and get something to stanch the blood!" snapped White. "Here, Sam, see what you can do! I don't know how far gone he is. I'll get hold of Chester at once. Thank God it's a Sunday, and he won't be out!"
Mr. Jones, whose cheeks had assumed a yellow pallor, knelt clumsily down beside Wally's body, and told Janet in an unsteady voice to tear a piece off her petticoat, or something.
Janet, however, had had her father's handkerchief thrust into her hand, and with trembling fingers was unbuttoning Wally's shirt to lay bare a neat, red hole in his chest. The sight of blood made her feel sick, but after the first few moments of startled horror she had managed to pull herself together and even had the presence of mind to call after her father, who was running back to the house, that it was of no use for him to ring up Dr Chester.
"He's out!" she shouted. "I saw his car pass the house from my bedroom window just before I came down! Going towards Palings!"
"Damn!" said White, checking for an instant. "All right, I'll get his partner!"
He vanished from their sight round a clump of azaleas, and Janet, swallowing hard, turned back to Wally's body.
Samuel Jones had struggled out of his coat, and rolled it into a pillow for Wally's head. His gaily striped shirt seemed out of keeping with his blanched, horror-stricken countenance. He said in a hushed voice: "It's no use, Miss Janet. He's gone."
"Oh no, don't say that! He can't have!" quavered Janet, holding White's handkerchief pressed to the wound in Wally's chest. "Oh, what an awful thing! Oughtn't we to try to give him brandy? Only, it says in my First-aid book that one should never '
"He's gone," repeated Jones, laying Wally's slack hand, which he had been holding by the wrist, down on the planks. "You can't feel a pulse. Not a flicker. Clean through the heart, if you ask me. My God, if I'd known this was going to happen I'd never have come!"