Red In The Morning Read Online Free Page B

out of the tent and up to the road.
    “That was Latin,” said Jenny. “What does it mean?”
    “‘See you later,’” said Mansel. “I’m so awfully sorry, my sweet.”
    “I didn’t mind,” said Jenny. “And it might have been very much worse. He spoke so nicely to me, before William came. I said it was such a pity that he should have come to this: and he said he never would have, if he had had the honour of knowing people like us. His father was a clergyman, he said, with only two articles of faith: one was the elevation of the birth rate – What are you laughing at?”
    “My beauty,” said I, “you’d get off with the devil himself.”
    “Oh, of course he’s hopeless,” said Jenny. “And dangerous, too. I felt that all the time. But he was like us once, you know, and he can throw back to those days.”
    I looked at Mansel.
    “What do we do?” I said.
    Mansel got to his feet and strolled round the back of the tent. Then he returned and sat down.
    “Leave Freilles,” he said quietly. “At once. What a mercy we have the two cars!” Jenny and I had a Rolls, and Mansel had brought his with him, when he had come to stay. “We must give no sign of departure, for the villa is certainly watched. To all appearances, we must behave as usual. When Carson comes for us, we shall go back to lunch: and we shall return to the plage at half-past three – wearing peignoirs and bathing things. And Carson will come to get us at half-past five. But he won’t come here, because we shall not be here. We shall have left the plage and strolled into the woods. He’ll pick us up at the crossroads, four miles north of this place. In the car he will have a suitcase, containing our clothes.
    “Now before Carson leaves the villa at twenty past five, he and Bell will have packed and have loaded the other car. There’s a door from the house to the garage, and so that operation will not be observed. At exactly half-past five, Bell will leave the garage and drive for Bayonne. That will make any watcher think, but he can’t do much. You see, he is bound to wait until Carson is overdue. At Bayonne Bell will turn east, without going into the town: and later he will turn north, to join us somewhere near Dax. And that’s as far as I’ve got.”
    I thought, and still think, that it was a very long way, for Brevet had left us less than five minutes before. But Jonathan Mansel’s brain was unearthly swift; and, what is more to the point, so far from being troubled by any sudden pass, the more instant the peril, the clearer it seemed to grow.
    Mansel was addressing Jenny.
    “I’m terribly sorry, my darling, to rope you and William in. But, as things are, I cannot possibly go and leave you here. It’s me they want, of course: but if I alone cleared out, they’d turn upon you and William the moment they found I’d gone.”
    The great, blue eyes surveyed him, and a little hand came out, to rest on my knee.
    “D’you think,” said Jenny, slowly, “that we would have let you go? That we could have gone on bathing, day after day, while those two men were trying to take your life?”
    “My sweet–”
    “You know as well as I do that Richard will never leave you, until this danger’s past. And I will never leave him, unless, because I’m a girl, I’m in the way.”
    So simple a declaration upset both Mansel and me, for Jenny is wholly artless and the words which she had spoken were those her heart bade her say. That those words were perfectly true, I need hardly say, for Mansel’s quarrel was mine, as, had the case been reversed, my quarrel would have been his.
    Since forty minutes must pass before Carson was due, we all went back to the rollers and bathed again. This at Mansel’s suggestion: “for,” said he, “to dwell upon this business is idle – and heaven knows when we’ll get such bathing again.”
     
    By three o’clock that day I had done what I had to do. I had paid our rent in advance, so, except for the