“Can you find a seat?” she went on, indicating the larger of the two armchairs. “You have come at a propitious moment. I was just about to make tea.”
“That sounds delightful,” Cheyne declared. “I came at the first moment that I thought I decently could. I was discharged from the hospital this morning and I thought I couldn’t let a day pass without coming to try at least to express my thanks for what you did for me.”
Miss Merrill had filled an aluminum kettle from a tap at a small sink and now placed it on a gas stove.
“We’ll suppose the thanks expressed, all due and right and proper,” she answered. “But I’ll tell you what you can do. Light the stove! It makes such a plop I hate to go near it.”
Cheyne, having duly produced the expected plop, returned to his armchair and took up again the burden of his tale.
“But that’s all very well, Miss Merrill; awfully good of you and all that,” he protested, “but it doesn’t really meet the case at all. If you hadn’t come along and played the good Samaritan I should have died. I was—”
“If you don’t stop talking about it I shall begin to wish you had,” she smiled. “How did the accident happen? I should be interested to hear that, because I’ve thought about it and haven’t been able to imagine any way it could have come about.”
“I want to tell you.” Cheyne looked into her clear eyes and suddenly said more than he had intended. “In fact, I should like to tell you the whole thing from the beginning. It’s rather a queer tale. You mayn’t believe it, but I think it would interest you. But first—please don’t be angry, but you must let me ask the question—did you pay for the taxi or whatever means you took to get me to the hospital?”
She laughed.
“Well, you are persistent. However, I suppose I may allow you to pay for that. It was five and six, if you must know, and a shilling to the man because he helped to carry you and took no end of trouble.” She blushed slightly as if recognizing the unconscious admission. “A whole six and six you owe me.”
“Is that all, Miss Merrill? Do tell me if there was anything else.”
“There was nothing else, Mr. Cheyne. That squares everything between us.”
“By Jove! That’s the last thing it does! But if I mustn’t speak of that, I mustn’t. But please tell me this also. I understood from the nurse that you came with me to hospital. I am horrified every time I think of your having so much trouble, and I should like to understand how it all happened.”
“There’s not much to tell,” Miss Merrill answered. “It was all very simple and straightforward. There happened to be a garage in the main street, quite close, and I went there and got a taxi. It was very dark, and when the driver and I looked over the fence we could not see you, but the driver fortunately had a flash lamp for examining his engine, and with its help we saw that you had fainted. We found you very awkward to get out.” She smiled and her face lighted up charmingly. “We had to drag you round to the side of the building where there was a wire paling instead of the close sheeted fence in front. I held up the wires and the cabby dragged you through. Then when we got you into the cab I had to go along too, because the cabby said he wouldn’t take what might easily be a dead body—a corp, he called it—without someone to account for its presence. He talked of you as if you were a sack of coal.”
Cheyne was really upset by the recital.
“Good Lord!” he cried. “I can’t say how distressed I am to know what I let you in for. I can’t ever forget it. All right, I won’t,” he added as she held up her hand. “Go on, please. I want to hear it all.”
Miss Merrill’s hazel eyes twinkled as she continued:
“By the time we got to the hospital I was sure that nothing would save me from being hanged for murder. But there was no trouble. I simply told my story, left my name and address, and that was all. Now tell me what really happened to you; or rather wait until we’ve had tea.”
Cheyne sat back in his chair admiring the easy grace with which she moved about as she prepared the meal. She was really an awfully nice looking girl, he thought; not perhaps exactly pretty, but jolly looking, the kind of girl it is a pleasure just to sit down and watch. And as they chatted over tea he discovered that she had a mind of her own. Indeed, she showed a nimble wit and a shrewd if rather quaint outlook on men and things.
“You mentioned Dartmouth just now,” she remarked presently. “Do you know it well?”
“Why, I live there.”
“Do you really? Do you know people there called Beresford?”
“Archie and Flo? Rather. They live on our road, but about half a mile nearer the town. Do you know them?”
“Flo only. I’ve been going to stay with them two or three times, though
