"Right; what's yours?"
"Never mind what mine is. If you take my advice you'll give Timberham as wide a berth as ever you can."
"Why?"
The husky undertone became still huskier:
"The cops are looking out for you. Don't ask me how I know--ask no questions and you'll hear no lies--but I do know. I don't know what they want you for--I don't want to know--but they've got the office to look out for a yellow van, with black stripes and red wheels, driven by a party named Frazer, who's got a girl with him; I expect that's her looking out of the window."
Mr Frazer glanced over his shoulder. For some time conversation with his passenger had languished. He had told her where he kept his little store of books, and she had withdrawn into the van, nominally to read one; but that she was doing more thinking than reading was a fact which she would not have cared to deny. Now, attracted by the appearance of the stranger, she had drawn close to the open casement. Stopping the van, Mr Frazer descended to the ground. He spoke to the man on the bareribbed horse.
"Would you mind coming on one side for a moment?" They moved to where the grass fringed the road, and where, if they spoke in lowered tones, they were out of earshot of the girl at the window. "Are you sure of what you say?"
The two men looked each other in the face. Frazer saw that this man was a wild-looking fellow, whose experience of the police and their methods was probably of a practical kind. So far as he could judge he seemed to be sufficiently in earnest.
"Dead sure. I tell you they're looking out for you for all they're worth. I shouldn't be surprised but what they're looking out for you over the whole countryside. I know 'em?" He both sounded and looked as if he did. "Just this side the town, about a couple of miles from where we are, there's one of 'em coming along the road; I dare lay he's coming to meet you."
"That's kind of him."