Dangle was puffed up to find that his guess of Havant was right. In view of the fact that beyond Havant the Southampton road has a steep hill continuously on the right-hand side, and the sea on the left, he hit upon a magnificent scheme for heading the young folks off. He and Mrs. Milton would go to Fareham, Widgery and Phipps should alight one each at the intermediate stations of Cosham and Porchester, and come on by the next train if they had no news. If they did not come on, a wire to the Fareham post office was to explain why. It was Napoleonic, and more than consoled Dangle for the open derision of the Havant street boys at the handkerchief which still protected his damaged eye.
Moreover, the scheme answered to perfection. The fugitives escaped by a hair’s breadth. They were outside the Golden Anchor at Fareham, and preparing to mount, as Mrs. Milton and Dangle came round the corner from the station. “It’s her!” said Mrs. Milton, and would have screamed. “Hist!” said Dangle, gripping the lady’s arm, removing his handkerchief in his excitement, and leaving the piece of meat over his eye, an extraordinary appearance which seemed unexpectedly to calm her. “Be cool!” said Dangle, glaring under the meat. “They must not see us. They will get away else. Were there flys at the station?” The young couple mounted and vanished round the corner of the Winchester road. Had it not been for the publicity of the business, Mrs. Milton would have fainted. “Save her!” she said.
“Ah! A conveyance,” said Dangle. “One minute.”
He left her in a most pathetic attitude, with her hand pressed to her heart, and rushed into the Golden Anchor. Dog cart in ten minutes. Emerged. The meat had gone now, and one saw the cooling puffiness over his eye. “I will conduct you back to the station,” said Dangle; “hurry back here, and pursue them. You will meet Widgery and Phipps and tell them I am in pursuit.”
She was whirled back to the railway station and left there, on a hard, blistered, wooden seat in the sun. She felt tired and dreadfully ruffled and agitated and dusty. Dangle was, no doubt, most energetic and devoted; but for a kindly, helpful manner commend her to Douglas Widgery.
Meanwhile Dangle, his face golden in the evening sun, was driving (as well as he could) a large, black horse harnessed into a thing called a gig, northwestward towards Winchester. Dangle, barring his swollen eye, was a refined-looking little man, and he wore a deerstalker cap and was dressed in dark grey. His neck was long and slender. Perhaps you know what gigs are,—huge, big, wooden things and very high and the horse, too, was huge and big and high, with knobby legs, a long face, a hard mouth, and a whacking trick of pacing. Smack, smack, smack, smack it went along the road, and hard by the church it shied vigorously at a hooded perambulator.
The history of the Rescue Expedition now becomes confused. It appears that Widgery was extremely indignant to find Mrs. Milton left about upon the Fareham platform. The day had irritated him somehow, though he had started with the noblest intentions, and he seemed glad to find an outlet for justifiable indignation. “He’s such a spasmodic creature,” said Widgery. “Rushing off! And I suppose we’re to wait here until he comes back! It’s likely. He’s so egotistical, is Dangle. Always wants to mismanage everything himself.”
“He means to help me,” said Mrs. Milton, a little reproachfully, touching his arm. Widgery was hardly in the mood to be mollified all at once. “He need not prevent ME,” he said, and stopped. “It’s no good talking, you know, and you are tired.”
“I can go on,” she said brightly, “if only we find her.” “While I was cooling my heels in Cosham I bought a county map.” He produced and opened it. “Here, you see, is the road out of Fareham.” He proceeded with the calm deliberation of a business man to develop a proposal of taking train forthwith to Winchester. “They must be going to Winchester,” he explained. It was inevitable. To-morrow Sunday, Winchester a cathedral town, road going nowhere else of the slightest importance.
“But Mr. Dangle?”