"
"Oh, let's hang him an' be done," Hinchcliffe grunted. "It's evidently
what he's sufferin' for."
Somehow murder did not appeal to us that warm noon. We sat down to smoke
in the heather, and presently out of the valley below came the thick beat
of a petrol-motor ascending. I paid little attention to it till I heard
the roar of a horn that has no duplicate in all the Home Counties.
"That's the man I was going to lunch with!" I cried. "Hold on!" and I ran
down the road.
It was a big, black, black-dashed, tonneaued twenty-four horse Octopod;
and it bore not only Kysh my friend, and Salmon his engineer, but my own
man, who for the first time in our acquaintance smiled.
"Did they get you? What did you get? I was coming into Linghurst as
witness to character--your man told me what happened--but I was stopped
near Instead Wick myself," cried Kysh.
"What for?"
"Leaving car unattended. An infernal swindle, when you think of the loose
carts outside every pub in the county. I was jawing with the police for an
hour, but it's no use. They've got it all their own way, and we're
helpless."
Hereupon I told him my tale, and for proof, as we topped the hill, pointed
out the little group round my car.
All supreme emotion is dumb. Kysh put on the brake and hugged me to his
bosom till I groaned. Then, as I remember, he crooned like a mother
returned to her suckling.
"Divine! Divine!" he murmured.
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