"What!"
"It's a fact. God knows how he did it; but he's just phoned in here from a house a long way down the road. Wanted to let the city editor know he was flying in with the one best bet of the year. Luckily he gave no details."
Varney's lips tightened; he spoke in a low voice. "He mustn't arrive—not till I've seen him first. Did you find out how he's coming—river or road?"
"Trust Uncle Dudley. He's borrowed a bicycle and is burning up the River road with it."
"Good. How soon will you be through?"
"About three minutes."
"You've hired a motor, you said? Get it and run back here as soon as you can, will you?"
He rapidly explained the situation, though making no mention of Higginson: how somebody had plotted to get them together in the darkness of Main Street, how Miss Carstairs and her friend had kindly stopped to warn them, and how he had humored her by promising to take all sorts of precautions.
"Right-O," said Peter. "I'll be in the alley at the back in no time.
Come quick when I honk three times."
Varney came back into the little office where Mary Carstairs waited, fresh from more cheap plotting in which she was the innocent central figure; and faced her, uncomfortable, ill at ease, disquieted inwardly as a conspirator taken red-handed.