“Is there any need for further risk?” she faltered. “Moreover, Margaret will see at once that something has gone wrong. I am a poor hand at deception where—where Davie is concerned.”
“Have no fear. Tell them everything. Mr. Hume will be very seriously injured—in to-morrow morning’s papers. This expert in street accidents must be led to believe he has succeeded. In any case, aided by a miserable fowl, he is far enough from here at this moment. We will return in twenty minutes.”
The girl was so agitated that she hardly noticed Brett’s words. But their purport reassured her, and she left them.
The three men passed out into the drizzling rain. Owing to the Strand being “up,” a continuous stream of traffic flowed through the Avenue. Hume pointed out the gap through which the horse was forced, and then they darted across the roadway.
“I fell here,” he said, indicating a muddy flood of road scrapings, in which were embedded many splinters from the wreckage of the hansom.
Brett, careless of the amazement he caused to hurrying pedestrians, waded through the bed of mud, kicking up any objects encountered by his feet.
He uttered an exclamation of triumph when he produced a stick from the depths.
“I thought I should find it,” he said. “When the horse fell it was a hundred to one against the stick being extricated from the reins, and its owner could not wait an instant. You and the stick, my dear Hume, lay close together.”
A small crowd was gathering. The barrister laughed.
“Gentleman,” he said, “why are you so surprised? Which of you would not dirty his boots to recover such a valuable article as this?”