Part 9 (1/2)
”Who did you see?” put in young Turnbull.
”Miss Banks,” Frank said.
”You are quite sure that Brenda hadn't been there?” Olive Jervaise added by way of rounding up and completing the inquiry.
It was then Frank's turn to begin an unnecessary interrogation by saying ”She isn't here, then?” He must have known that she was not, by their solicitude; but if he had not put that superfluous question, I believe I should; though I might not have added as he did, ”You're absolutely certain?”
Young Turnbull then exploded that phase of the situation by remarking, ”I suppose you know that the car's gone?”
Frank was manifestly shocked by that news.
”Good Lord! no, I didn't. How do you know?” he said.
”I left my own car in the ditch, just outside the Park,” Ronnie explained.
”Don't know in the least how it happened. Suppose I was thinking of something else. Anyway, I've fairly piled her up, I'm afraid. I was coming back from the vicarage, you know. And then, of course, I walked up here, and Mr. Jervaise was good enough to offer me your car to get home in; and when we went out to the garage, it had gone.”
”But was it there when you went to get your own car?” Frank asked.
”I'm bothered if I know,” Ronnie confessed. ”I've been trying hard to remember.”
Mr. Jervaise sighed heavily and took a little stroll across to the other side of the Hall. He seemed to me to be more perturbed and unhappy than any of the others.
Frank stood in a good central position and scowled enormously, while his mother, his sister, and Ronnie waited anxiously for the important decision that he was apparently about to deliver. And they still looked to him to find some expedient when his impending judgment had taken form in the obvious p.r.o.nouncement, ”Looks as if they'd gone off together, somewhere.”
”It's very dreadful,” Mrs. Jervaise said; and then Olive slightly lifted the awful flatness of the dialogue by saying,--
”We ought to have guessed. It's absurd that we let the thing go on.”
”One couldn't be sure,” her mother protested.
”If you're going to wait till you're sure, of course...” Frank remarked brutally, with a shrug of his eyebrows that effectively completed his sentence.
”It was so impossible to believe that she would do a thing like that,” his mother complained.
”Point is, what's to be done now,” Ronnie said. ”By gad, if I catch that chap, I'll wring his neck.”
Mr. Jervaise, who was taking a lonely promenade up and down the far side of the Hall, looked up more hopefully at this threat.
”Oh! we can _catch_ him,” Frank commented. ”He has stolen the car, for one thing...” his inflection implied that catching Banks might be only the beginning of the trouble.
”Well, once we've got him,” returned Ronnie hopefully.
”Don't be an a.s.s,” Frank snubbed him. ”We can't advertise it all over the county that he has gone off with Brenda.”
”I don't see...” Ronnie began, but Mrs. Jervaise interrupted him.
”It was so unfortunate that the Atkinsons should have been here,” she remarked.
”Every one will know, in any case,” Olive added.