She had that morning sent Gerald Wade’s unfinished letter to Loraine Wade at Deane Priory, enclosing a few explanatory lines. The curious impression it had made upon her was somewhat dimmed in the daylight, yet it still struck her as needing explanation. She intended to get hold of Bill Eversleigh sometime and extract from him fuller details of the houseparty which had ended so tragically. In the meantime, it was a lovely morning and she felt particularly well and the Hispano was running like a dream.
Bundle pressed her foot down on the accelerator and the Hispano responded at once. Mile after mile vanished, traffic was few and far between and Bundle had a clear stretch of road in front of her.
And then, without any warning whatever, a man reeled out of the hedge and on to the road right in front of the car. To stop in time was out of the question. With all her might Bundle wrenched at the steering wheel and swerved out to the right. The car was nearly in the ditch–nearly, but not quite. It was a dangerous manoeuvre; but it succeeded. Bundle was almost certain that she had missed the man.
She looked back and felt a sickening sensation in the middle of her anatomy. The car had not passed over the man, but nevertheless it must have struck him in passing. He was lying face downwards on the road, and he lay ominously still.
Bundle jumped out and ran back. She had never yet run over anything more important than a stray hen. The fact that the accident was hardly her fault did not weigh with her at the minute. The man had seemed drunk, but drunk or not, she had killed him. She was quite sure she had killed him. Her heart beat sickeningly in great pounding thumps, sounding right up in her ears.
She knelt down by the prone figure and turned him very gingerly over. He neither groaned nor moaned. He was young, she saw, rather a pleasant-faced young man, well dressed and wearing a small toothbrush moustache.
There was no external mark of injury that she could see, but she was quite positive that he was either dead or dying. His eyelids flickered and the eyes half opened. Piteous eyes, brown and suffering, like a dog’s. He seemed to be struggling to speak. Bundle bent right over.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes?’
There was something he wanted to say, she could see that. Wanted to say badly. And she couldn’t help him, couldn’t do anything.
At last the words came, a mere sighing breath:
‘Seven Dials…tell…’
‘Yes,’ said Bundle again. It was a name he was trying to get out–trying with all his failing strength. ‘Yes. Who am I to tell?’
‘Tell…Jimmy Thesiger…’ He got it out at last, and then, suddenly, his head fell back and his body went limp.
Bundle sat back on her heels, shivering from head to foot. She could never have imagined that anything so awful could have happened to her. He was dead–and she had killed him.
She tried to pull herself together. What must she do now? A doctor–that was her first thought. It was possible–just possible–that the man might only be unconscious, not dead. Her instinct cried out against the possibility, but she forced herself to act upon it. Somehow or other she must get him into the car and take him to the nearest doctor’s. It was a deserted stretch of country road and there was no one to help her.
Bundle, for all her slimness, was strong. She had muscles of whipcord. She brought the Hispano as close as possible, and then exerting all her strength, she dragged and pulled the inanimate figure into it. It was a horrid business, and one that made her set her teeth, but at last she managed it.
Then she jumped into the driver’s seat and set off. A couple of miles brought her into a small town and on inquiring she was quickly directed to the doctor’s house.
Dr Cassell, a kindly, middle-aged man, was startled to come into his surgery and find a girl there who was evidently on the verge of collapse.
Bundle spoke abruptly.
‘I–I think I’ve killed a man. I ran over him. I brought him along in the car. He’s outside now. I–I was driving too fast, I suppose. I’ve always driven too fast.’
The doctor cast a practised glance over her. He stepped over to a shelf and poured something into a glass. He brought it over to her.
‘Drink this down,’ he said, ‘and you’ll feel better. You’ve had a shock.’
Bundle drank obediently and a tinge of colour came into her pallid face. The doctor nodded approvingly.
‘That’s right. Now I want you to sit quietly here. I’ll go out and attend to things. After I’ve made sure there’s nothing to be done for the poor fellow, I’ll come back and we’ll talk about it.’
He was away some time. Bundle watched the clock on the mantelpiece. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes–would he ever come?
Then the door opened and Dr Cassell reappeared. He looked different–Bundle noticed that at once–grimmer and at the same time more alert. There was something else in his manner that she did not quite understand, a suggestion of repressed excitement.
‘Now then, young lady,’ he said. ‘Let’s have this out. You ran over this man, you say. Tell me just how the accident happened?’
Bundle explained to the best of her ability. The doctor followed her narrative with keen attention.
‘Just so; the car didn’t pass over his body?’
‘No. In fact, I thought I’d missed him altogether.’
‘He was reeling, you say?’
‘Yes, I thought he was drunk.’
‘And he came from the hedge?’
‘There was a gate just there, I think. He must have come through the gate.’
The doctor nodded, then he leaned back in his chair and removed his pince-nez.
‘I’ve no doubt at all,’ he said, ‘that you’re a very reckless driver, and that you’ll probably run over some poor fellow and do for him one of these days–but you haven’t done it this time.’
‘But–’
‘The car never touched him. This man was shot.’
Chapter 6
Seven Dials Again
Bundle stared at him. And very slowly the world, which for the last three quarters of an hour had been upside down, shifted till it stood once more the right way up. It was quite two minutes before Bundle spoke, but when she did it was no longer the panic-stricken girl but the real Bundle, cool, efficient and logical.
‘How could he be shot?’ she said.
‘I don’t know how he could,’ said the doctor dryly. ‘But he was. He’s got a rifle bullet in him all right. He bled internally, that’s why you didn’t notice anything.’
Bundle nodded.
‘The question is,’ the doctor continued, ‘who shot him? You saw nobody about?’
Bundle shook her head.
‘It’s odd,’ said the doctor. ‘If it was an accident, you’d expect the fellow who did it would come running to the rescue–unless just possibly he didn’t know what he’d done.’
‘There was no one about,’ said Bundle. ‘On the road, that is.’
‘It seems to me,’ said the doctor, ‘that the poor lad must have been running–the bullet got him just as he passed through the gate and he came reeling on to the road in consequence. You didn’t hear a shot?’
Bundle shook her head.
‘But I probably shouldn’t anyway,’ she said, ‘with the noise of the car.’