“I’m sorry, sir,” replied the publican, and Carn’s heart did a back-somersault and flopped sickeningly against his diaphragm—“two of the men from Sir John’s came down and hired the car early this morning to go into Ilfracombe for their day off.”
“Damn the gentlemen,” said Carn, but he said it to himself, and he did not call them gentlemen.
Aloud he said, with only a moderate display of annoyance:
“I ought to try and get over somehow—my patient’s in a bad way, and they’re expecting me. I suppose these fellows won’t be back till late?”
“They didn’t say, sir, but I’m not expecting them till the evening.”
“Hasn’t Horrick got a trap?”
Horrick was the nearest farmer, about half a mile out of the village, and the innkeeper opined that Horrick had something of the sort.
“I wonder if you could send a boy over to find out if he’d lend it to me?” suggested Carn.
The innkeeper cogitated at length, in the leisured manner of country people, while Carn masked his impatience as best he could. At last the man decided that it would be possible.
“Perhaps you’ll join me in a glass of beer, sir?” he invited, after making this momentous resolution.