The yellow-faced man glanced at his wrist watch.
“I can’t prevent you!” he exclaimed. Then he rapped out something in Dutch to Jeekes. The secretary leaned forward to catch the remark. The yellow-faced man threw in the clutch.
“Goed!” (good), answered Jeekes in the same language, and resumed his seat as the car glided smoothly away from the kerb into the traffic of the busy square. Robin settled himself back in the seat with an inaudible sigh of satisfaction. He did not like the look of Jeekes’s companion, he told himself, and Mr. Victor, whoever he was, had certainly manifested no great desire for Robin’s company. But he was going to see Mary. That was all that counted for the moment.
They threaded their way through the streets in silence. It passed through Robin’s mind to start a discussion with Jeekes about the death of Hartley Parrish. But in the circumstances he conceived it might easily assume a controversial character, and he did not want to take any risk of jeopardizing his chance of meeting Mary again. And no other subject of conversation occurred to him. He did not know Jeekes at all well, knew him in fact only as a week-end guest knows the private secretary of his host, a shadowy personality, indispensable and part of the household, but scarcely more than a name ...
The car had put on speed as they left the more crowded streets and emerged into the suburbs. Now they were running over a broad straight main road lined with poplars. Robin wondered whither they were bound. He was about to put the question to the secretary when the man Victor turned his head and said over his shoulder:
“Nu!”
At the same moment the speed of the car sensibly diminished.
Jeekes put his arm across the young man at his side.
“That door,” he said, touching his sleeve, “doesn’t seem to be properly shut. Would you mind ...”
Robin pushed the door with his hand.