The girl at the exchange said ‘Six minutes.’ Hilary said, ‘Golly!’ And Henry said, ‘Another six,’ and Hilary giggled, and Captain Henry Cunningham blushed because now he really had given himself away.

‘There’s a train at seven-forty,’ said Hilary sweetly. ‘We don’t want any more minutes – it’s much too expensive. You hurry up and catch that train, darling.’

The telephone bell tinkled and the line went dead.

There was no one but Hilary in the lounge of the Magpie and Parrot when Henry walked in about an hour and a half later. He picked her up and kissed her as if they had never broken off their engagement, and Hilary kissed him back as she had never done while they were still engaged. It was still only a very little while since the sharpest edge of her despair had been, ‘I shall never see Henry again.’

Henry completely forgot all the things he had been going to say. He kissed her, and went on kissing her, and at intervals he asked her if she was sure she wasn’t hurt.

‘If I was – would you mind?’

‘Don’t say things like that!’

She burrowed her nose into his neck.

‘Why should you, darling? I mean we’re not engaged any more. You wouldn’t have had to wear a black tie if I’d been murdered.’

Henry’s arms went all stiff and hard. It was most uncomfortable.

‘You’re not to say things like that!’

‘Why, darling?’

‘I don’t like it.’ He held her tight and kissed her hard.

Nice to have Henry’s arms round her. Nice to be kissed.

All of a sudden he wasn’t kissing her any more. He was making a plan.

‘Look here, we’ve got to catch the nine-fifty. Have you had any food?’

‘No – I waited for you. I thought it would be nice if you paid for it.’

‘Then we must eat, and you can tell me what you’ve been doing. You’re sure you’re not hurt?’

‘Mortally wounded, but I’m being brave about it.’

Henry frowned at the scratches.

‘I can’t think what you’ve been doing to yourself,’ he said, and got a mournful glance.

‘My fatal beauty is wrecked! What a good thing we’re disengaged, because I should simply have to be noble and break it off if we weren’t.’

“No fishing!’ said Henry, and marched her off to the dining-room, where the head waiter informed them that the nine-fifty had been nine-forty-five since the first of October, and though of course it might be late on account of the fog, he wouldn’t advise them to chance it. He recommended soup and a cold veal and ham pie, and he thought they had better have a taxi from Mr. Whittington’s garage, and if they wished him to do so, he would get the hall porter to ring up about it.

It didn’t seem to be the moment for explanations. The soup was good, the veal and ham pie was very good, and the coffee was delicious. The head waiter hovered like a ministering angel. Hilary thought how nice it would be if she and Henry were here on their honeymoon instead of escaping from murderers. And then something made her blush, and she looked up and met Henry’s eye and blushed more brightly still.

They caught their train, and had a carriage to themselves-an empty train and an empty carriage, but not frightening any more, because Henry was there too. As the engine started and their carriage banged clanking into the buffers of the one in front of it, Henry said,

‘Now, Hilary -what have you been up to? You’d better get it off your chest.’

Hilary got it off her chest. They were facing one another in two corner seats. She could see exactly how Henry was taking it, and he could see the scratch on her chin, and the scratch on her forehead, and just how little colour there was in her cheeks.

‘You see, darling, I simply had to find Mrs. Mercer, so it’s no good going over that part of it, because we’re sure to quarrel, and if we once start quarrelling, I shan’t ever get on with telling you about the people who tried to murder me.’

‘Hilary – stop! What are you saying?’

She gave a little grave nod.

‘It’s true. I want to tell you about it.’ Then, suddenly off at a tangent, ‘I say, I do hope the young man I hired the bicycle from doesn’t think I’ve embezzled it, because he’s rather a lamb, and I shouldn’t like him to think I was an embezzler.’

‘He won’t. The hotel is going to tell him to send in his bill. You get on with telling me what happened/

Hilary shivered.

‘It was perfectly beastly,’ she said – ‘like the stickiest kind of nightmare. I kept on hoping I’d wake up, but I didn’t. You see, I found out that the Mercers had been in Ledlington and their landlady hoofed them out because Mrs. Mercer screamed in the night. And the girl in the milk-shop said she thought they’d moved into a cottage on the Ledstow road, so first I went to the house-agents to find out about cottages, and then I did a gloomy trek right out to Ledstow, forcing my way into cottages as I went. And everyone was very nice, only none of them was Mrs. Mercer. By the time I got to Ledstow I felt as if I had been hunting needles in bundles of hay for years, and it was tea-time. So I had tea at the village pub, and when I opened the door to get my bill, there was Mercer walking down the passage like a grimly ghost.’

‘Hilary!’ Henry’s tone was very unbelieving.

‘Word of honour, darling. Well, of course, I shot back into the room, and rang, and paid my bill and fled. But just as I was opening the outside door, there he was coming back again – and I think he saw me.’

‘Why?’ said Henry.

‘Because of what happened afterwards.’

‘What did happen?’

‘Well, it was practically pitch-dark, and there were wallops of fog lying about loose all over the place, and whenever I came to one I had to get off and walk, so I wasn’t getting on very fast. And every time I had to get off I got a most horrid nightmare kind of feeling that something was coming after me, and that it was going to catch me up.’

There was a pause.

Henry said, ‘Nonsense!’ in a rough, reassuring way, and Hilary said in rather a wavering voice,

‘Henry -would you mind -if I held your hand – because – ’

Henry pulled her across the carriage on to his knees, put both arms round her, and rocked her as if she was a baby.

‘First -class – prize – silly – little – fool!’

‘Um – ’ said Hilary, a good deal comforted.

‘Now you can go on,’ said Henry.

She went on with her head against his shoulder.

‘Wasn’t nice. Was horrid. Like being lost dog in a bad dream. And just when it got to its worst a car came blinding out of the fog and I jumped for the side of the road. Henry, I only just jumped in time. They weren’t coming so fast at first, and I thought I’d try and follow them into Ledlington, and then I think they saw me, and they tried to run me down.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Henry with his arms round her.

‘No,’ said Hilary, in a soft, sighing voice.

‘They couldn’t!’

‘They did. And I jumped, and hit my head, and I must have passed out, because the next thing I knew they were carrying me. And one of them said I was only stunned. And then he said, “Quick now, and we’ll make a job of it!” And then, Henry – then – they put me down in the road and got back into the car and got ready to drive it over me.’

Henry stopped rocking. His arms tightened about her. Behind the jab she had just given to his nerves his mind said, ‘You know this can’t possibly be true. She got run down in the fog and hit her head. The rest of it isn’t anything at all – she dreamt it.’

She turned her head on his shoulder. By craning backwards she could see his profile with the ceiling light behind it. It was one of those strong, silent profiles. She gave a little gentle sigh and said,

‘You’re not believing me.’

It was really very difficult for Henry. The last thing on earth he wanted was to start another quarrel, but he had by nature the gift which Thomas the Rhymer so indignantly refused at the hands of the Queen of Elfland – the tongue that can never lie.