We left the place quickly; but I looked back just once at the scene, for it seemed to me very strange of the sun still to lie on it all like a carpet of gold. That is how I felt about it.
IV
Swiftly Tarlyon put the bonnet of his car to the direction from which we had come, where lay the town whose name is of no interest.
“How far is it, d’you think, Ralph?”
“About four miles,” I ventured; and Tarlyon proceeded to eat up those four miles as a conjuror eats up yards of ribbon. It perished beneath us, that road, and the roaring cut-out tore the silence of Carmion Wood into a million bits, and may it never have found them again! Neither of us spoke. I was feeling sick.
We reached the outskirts of the town, and a piece of luck saved us from inquiring for the police station; for, approaching us on a bicycle, we saw a blue, helmeted figure, and by the stripes on his arm we knew him for a sergeant of police. Tarlyon pulled up.
“Better leave the bicycle and come with us to Carmion Wood,” he said. “Explain as we go. Urgent.”
The sergeant looked closely into Tarlyon’s face.
“Right, sir,” said he, and quickly gave the custody of his bicycle to a gnarled-looking woman in the open doorway of a labourer’s dwelling.
“What’s oop over ut Carmion?” asked she.