The following morning was wet – so wet that even the most ardent golfer might have his enthusiasm damped. Jack rose at the last possible moment, gulped his breakfast, ran for the train and again eagerly scanned the papers. Still no mention of any gruesome discovery having been made. The evening papers told the same tale.
‘Queer,’ said Jack to himself, ‘but there it is. Probably some blinking little boys having a game together up in the woods.’
He was out early the following morning. As he passed the cottage, he noted out of the tail of his eye that the girl was out in the garden again weeding. Evidently a habit of hers. He did a particularly good approach shot, and hoped that she had noticed it. As he teed up on the next tee, he glanced at his watch.
‘Just five and twenty past seven,’ he murmured. ‘I wonder –’
The words were frozen on his lips. From behind him came the same cry which had so startled him before. A woman’s voice, in dire distress.
‘Murder – help! Murder!’
Jack raced back. The pansy girl was standing by the gate. She looked startled, and Jack ran up to her triumphantly, crying out:
‘You heard it this time, anyway.’
Her eyes were wide with some emotion he could not fathom but he noticed that she shrank back from him as he approached, and even glanced back at the house, as though she meditated running to it for shelter.
She shook her head, staring at him.
‘I heard nothing at all,’ she said wonderingly.
It was as though she had struck him a blow between the eyes. Her sincerity was so evident that he could not disbelieve her. Yet he couldn’t have imagined it – he couldn’t – he couldn’t –
He heard her voice speaking gently – almost with sympathy.
‘You have had the shellshock, yes?’
In a flash he understood her look of fear, her glance back at the house. She thought that he suffered from delusions …
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