"And then, Tom—bless my spectacles! what of that cry we heard? Could that have been Mr. Nestor?"
There! It was out! The suspicion that Tom had been trying to keep his mind away from came to the fore. Well, he might as well race the issue now as later.
"I've been thinking of that," he told Mr. Damon. "It might have been Mary's father calling for help."
"But we looked, Tom, near the trees, and couldn't discover anything. If he had been calling for help—"
Mr. Damon did not finish.
"He may have fallen from his wheel and been hurt," said Tom, as he turned the electric runabout into the highway that Mr. Nestor would, most likely, have taken on his way from Shopton. "Then he may have called for help, and some autoists, passing, may have heard and taken him away."
"Yes, but where, Tom? Whoever called for help was taken away, that's sure. But where?"
"To some hospital, I suppose."
"Then hadn't we better inquire there? There are only two hospitals of any account around here. The one in Shopton and the one in Waterfield. My wife is on the board of Lady Managers there. We could call that hospital up and—"
"We'll look along the road first," said Tom. "If we begin to make inquiries at the hospitals there will be a lot of questions asked, and a general alarm may be sent out. Mr. Nestor wouldn't like that, if he isn't in any danger. And it may turn out that he has met an old friend, and has been talking with him all this while, forgetting all about the passage of time."