“He knows I’ve my eye on him,” the other replied. “Whether he’s stalled or no time’ll tell.”
“I’ve to see Tom Horton at Kirkby,” Inman remarked. “He sits up late, does Tom, and if I walk down with you we can talk things over as we go along. When I get back I’ll keep an eye on the Drakes’ house for a bit.”
The outer door closed, and from the window Nancy saw their shadowy forms disappear round the corner of the road. Without a moment’s hesitation she went downstairs and unbarring the kitchen window, climbed out, and having closed the sash behind her sped towards the beck and across the green to the Drakes’ house. The retreating forms of her husband and his companion could just be discerned in the faint moonlight far down the road as she knocked at the door.
“Is Jagger in?” she whispered when Hannah came. “Tell him I want him—at once—and come you with him.”
“Come where?” asked Hannah, in astonishment.
“Here!” said Nancy impatiently. “Bring him out and shut the door. There’s no time to lose!”
She had one eye on the road as she spoke, and she kept it there when Hannah and Jagger joined her; but however apprehensive she may have been of her husband’s return, she told her story clearly and concisely.
“What’ll you do?” she asked when Jagger made no immediate comment. “I can’t make head or tail of it.”
“I’ll go see what I can make on’t,” he said, “before he gets a chance to get there. It’s a rum do!”
“And if he finds you there?” she asked.