And another long silence fell between us.
Nevertheless I had not taken a special journey to St Briac merely to listen to his disturbed breathing. What I had seen that afternoon had taken matters far beyond that. If he, in his situation, thought he could do thus and thus, I was there to see, to the limit of my power, that he did not. I had already told him so, in those words. He had made a stiff reply. Then had come that calamitous song, and our present silence.
"Well ... you can't, and there's an end of it, Derry," I said, quietly but flatly.
"So I understood you to say."
"It's what I came specially to tell you."
"I gathered that too. By the way, if you want to send your car away there's a Casino bus going in at ten o'clock. No need to waste money."
"We may not have finished our talk by then."
"Then we can finish it in the bus. I'd thought of going in myself."
"To hang about that house?"
"You and the gendarmerie can stop that easily enough."