“Sure.”
“Me, too.”
Fyles leaped into the saddle. McBain, too, had mounted.
“Best hurry,” said Fyles, with another quick glance at the sky. “We get sharpish storms hereabouts in summer. You’ll be drowned else. So long.”
Bill moved away.
“So long,” he cried, relieved at the parting. “I haven’t far to go, but since you reckon a storm’s getting busy I’ll take a cut through the bush. It’ll be quicker that way.”
As he thrust his way into the bush he glanced back at the two policemen. They were both in the saddle watching him. Neither made any attempt at the hasty departure the Inspector had suggested.
However, their attitudes gave him no uneasiness. Truth to tell, he did not realize any significance. The one thing that did concern him and trouble him was that he somehow felt convinced that he had committed the very indiscretion O’Brien had warned him against.
The whole thing was very disquieting. An air of mystery seemed to have suddenly surrounded him, and he hated mystery. Why should there be any mystery? If there was one thing he delighted in more than another, it was the thought that his life was all in the open. The broad daylight could search the innermost corners of his every action. He had nothing in the world to hide. Why then should he suddenly find himself actively concerned with this atmosphere of mystery which had suddenly closed about him?