‘Hello!’ came his voice, and she hurried forward. ‘I was just coming back,’ he went on. ‘Sorry to have been such a time, but first I couldn’t find the car and then I couldn’t find the flask. I looked all round the back seat, then at last remembered I had passed it to Waverton and he had put it down and forgotten it, and it was on the front seat. Sorry to have kept you waiting.’
She was hardly listening. They were in a kind of shed, and she was at his side, leaning against him, breathless. She felt all weak now. ‘Half a minute,’ she gasped, and straightened herself.
He put a hand on her arm, and with the other hand sent the light of the torch circling round the shed. ‘Hello, what’s wrong?’
She waited a few moments. It didn’t seem much now. He would think she was being silly. ‘Nothing much really,’ she told him. ‘Only it seemed so funny. While I was standing at the door, waiting for you, all the lights in the house suddenly went out.’
‘That’s nothing,’ he interrupted. ‘They’ve been jumpy all the time. I’ve been expecting that. This home-made electricity’s always going wrong, and a night like this just asks for it.’
‘All right, Mr. Wise Man. I thought of that too. But there’s some more. Just after the lights went out, the door was banged in my face. I was locked out.’
‘That’s queer certainly,’ he admitted. ‘Perhaps the wind though....’
‘No, it wasn’t. Then I knocked, but nobody came. I was fed up standing there, waiting for you, so I set off to find you, and on the way I saw that man Morgan in the kitchen, fighting drunk. Phew!’ She blew out her breath. ‘I want to sit down.’
‘Of course you do,’ he cried. ‘You want a drink too. Well, then, inside or out?’
‘What do you mean? If it’s the drink, I want it inside.’