"Are you Mr. Illington?"
"Yes!" said Ferd.
The man looked very strange, as well he might, considering—well, considering the facts that came out later.
"I'll have to trouble you to come with me," he said, politely enough. "It will be only a short delay and we'll get this straightened out. But a car answering this description was stolen out the road a few miles and headed toward town, and there's a reward offered."
He stood on the step and I drove to the station house. I had it fixed in my own mind to go home and write a letter to Day confessing all, and then pack a few things and hide my wretched self for the rest of my life. I even planned what to take; my jewelry and my checkbook, and only a dinner dress or two; and I wrote the letter to Day—in my mind—and one to Ida, telling her it was only a lark, but it had gone wrong without any fault of mine. Then we drew up at the station.
Ferd got out and went in, and the officer turned on the pavement to help me out. But it was my chance and I took it; I just threw on the gas full and shot ahead down the street. He yelled after me and then began shooting. One bullet must have struck the good rear tire, for it collapsed and almost turned the car round. But I was desperate. I never looked back. I just drove for all I was worth down the street to its end, and after that down other streets, and still others. All the time I was saying I would rather die, and going round corners on two wheels, or one wheel and a rim.
Finally I got into a part of town I knew and pulled up half a block from my own house. I recall that and leaving the engine still going, and that hideous nightmare of a machine standing by the curb, with its tires lying out on the road in ribbons and its lamps smashed; and I remember going up the steps and finding the hall door unlocked. Then I recall nothing more for a while. I fainted.
It was Martha, one of the housemaids, who found me, I believe, as she was going out to early mass. They got me upstairs to bed and there was no use trying to run away that night; I could hardly stand. They got me some hot tea and a doctor and a trained nurse, and in the morning before breakfast Day came back. He tiptoed into my room and tried to kiss me, looking awfully frightened; but I would not let him.
"Send the nurse out!" I whispered. So he did; and still I would not let him kiss me. "Not until I've told you something," I said feebly. "You may not care to when you've heard it all."
He looked so big and so dependable and so worried that I could have screamed; but I had to tell him. Bill Henderson might have recognised me; and Ferd, as like as not, would be goose enough to tell Ida the whole story. And, anyhow, there's nothing like perfect honesty between husband and wife.