“They may be useful,” he said.
“But surely, Mr.—”
“Digby.” He supplied his name.
“Surely you’re exaggerating? I don’t mean that you’re doing it with any intention of frightening me, but there isn’t any danger to us?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got a queer feeling—had it all morning. How far is the nearest house from here?”
“Not half a mile away,” she said.
“You’re on the phone?”
She nodded.
“I’m scared, maybe. I’ll just go out into the road and have a look round. I wish that fellow would come back,” he added fretfully.
He walked slowly up the garden path and stood for a moment leaning over the gate. As he did so, he heard the rattle and asthmatic wheezing of an ancient car, and saw a tradesman’s trolley come round a corner of Heavytree Lane. Its pace grew slower as it got nearer to the house, and opposite the gate it stopped altogether. The driver getting down with a curse, lifted up the battered tin bonnet, and, groping under the seat, brought out a long spanner. Then, swift as thought, he half turned and struck at Digby’s head. The girl heard the sickening impact, saw the watcher drop limply to the path, and in another second she had slammed the door and thrust home the bolts.
She was calm; the hand that took the revolver from the hall-table did not tremble.
“Alma!” she called, and Alma came running downstairs.
“What on earth—?” she began, and then saw the pistol in Mirabelle’s hands.
“They are attacking the house,” said the girl quickly. “I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but they’ve just struck down one of the men who was protecting us. Take the gun, Alma.”
Alma’s face was contorted, and might have expressed fear or anger or both. Mirabelle afterwards learnt that the dominant emotion was one of satisfaction to find herself in so warlike an environment.
Running into the drawing-room, the girl pushed open the window, which commanded a view of the road. The gate was unfastened and two men, who had evidently been concealed inside the trolley, were lifting the unconscious man, and she watched, with a calm she could not understand in herself, as they threw him into the interior and fastened the tailboard. She counted four in all, including the driver, who was climbing back to his seat. One of the newcomers, evidently the leader, was pointing down the road towards the lane, and she guessed that he was giving directions as to where the car should wait, for it began to go backwards almost immediately and with surprising smoothness, remembering the exhibition it had given of decrepitude a few minutes before.
The man who had given instructions came striding down the path towards the door.
“Stop!”
He looked round with a start into the levelled muzzle of a Browning, and his surprise would, in any other circumstances, have been comical.
“It’s all right, miss—” he began.
“Put yourself outside that gate,” said Mirabelle coolly.
“I wanted to see you … very important—”
Bang!
Mirabelle fired a shot, aimed above his head, towards the old poplar. The man ducked and ran. Clear of the gate he dropped to the cover of a hedge, where his men already were, and she heard the murmur of their voices distinctly, for the day was still, and the far-off chugging of the trolley’s engine sounded close at hand. Presently she saw a head peep round the hedge.
“Can I have five minutes’ talk with you?” asked the leader loudly.
He was a thickset, bronzed man, with a patch of lint plastered to his face, and she noted unconsciously that he wore gold earrings.
“There’s no trouble coming to you,” he said, opening the gate as he spoke. “You oughtn’t to have fired, anyway. Nobody’s going to hurt you—”
He had advanced a yard into the garden as he spoke.
Bang, bang!
In her haste she had pressed butt and trigger just a fraction too long, and, startled by the knowledge that another shot was coming, her hand jerked round, and the second shot missed his head by the fraction of an inch. He disappeared in a flash, and a second later she saw their hats moving swiftly above the box. They were running towards the waiting car.
“Stay here, Alma!”
Alma Goddard nodded grimly, and the girl flew up the stairs to her room. From this elevation she commanded a better view. She saw them climb into the van, and in another second the limp body of the guard was thrown out into the hedge; then, after a brief space of time, the machine began moving and, gathering speed, disappeared in a cloud of dust on the Highcombe Road.
Mirabelle came down the stairs at a run, pulled back the bolts and flew out and along the road towards the still figure of the detective. He was lying by the side of the ditch, his head a mass of blood, and she saw that he was still breathing. She tried to lift him, but it was too great a task. She ran back to the house. The telephone was in the hall: an old-fashioned instrument with a handle that had to be turned, and she had not made two revolutions before she realized that the wire had been cut.
Alma was still in the parlour, the gun gripped tight in her hand, a look of fiendish resolution on her face.
“You must help me to get Digby into the house,” she said. “Where is he?”
Mirabelle pointed, and the two women, returning to the man, half lifted, half dragged him back to the hall. Laying him down on the brick floor, the girl went in search of clean linen. The kitchen, which was also the drying place for Alma’s more intimate laundry, supplied all that she needed. Whilst Alma watched unmoved the destruction of her wardrobe, the girl bathed the wound and the frightened nurse (who had disappeared at the first shot) applied a rough dressing. The wound was an ugly one, and the man showed no signs of recovering consciousness.
“We shall have to send Mary into Gloucester for an ambulance,” said Mirabelle. “We
