But now all the zest had gone out of it. The operations in the bush had occupied only a bare couple of minutes, but they had been enough to allow the quarry to vanish. He had completely disappeared. Hugo, sitting on the wall of the tank and trying to recover his breath, watched Emily as she darted to and fro, inspecting paths and drawing shrubberies, and knew that he had failed. It was a bitter moment, and he sat and smoked moodily. Presently even Emily gave the thing up. She came back to where Hugo sat, her tongue lolling, and disgust written all over her expressive features. There was a silence. Emily thought it was all Hugo's fault, Hugo thought it was Emily's. A stiffness had crept into their relations once again, and when at length Hugo, feeling a little more benevolent after three cigarettes, reached down and scratched Emily's head, the latter drew away coldly.
"Damn fool!" she said.
Hugo started. Was it some sound, some distant stealthy footstep, that had caused his companion to speak? He stared into the night.
"Fat head!" said Emily. "Can't even pull somebody out of a bush."
She laughed mirthlessly, and Hugo, now keenly on the alert, rose from his seat and gazed this way and that. And then, moving softly away from him at the end of the path, he saw a dark figure.
Instantly, Hugo Carmody became once more the man of action. With a stern shout he dashed along the path. And he had not gone half a dozen feet when the ground seemed suddenly to give way under him.
This path, as he should have remembered, knowing the terrain as he did, was a terrace path, set high above the shrubberies below. It was a simple enough matter to negotiate it in daylight and at a gentle stroll, but to race successfully along it in the dark required a Blondin. Hugo's third stride took him well into the abyss. He clutched out desperately, grasped only cool Worcestershire night air, and then, rolling down the slope, struck his head with great violence against a tree which seemed to have been put there for the purpose.
When the sparks had cleared away and the firework exhibition was over, he rose painfully to his feet.
A voice was speaking from above—the voice of Ronald Overbury Fish.
"Hullo!" said the voice. "What's up?"