Part 41 (1/2)

It seemed sent by Heaven. It was a seat, it went somewhere, and it was a hiding place. Seated amongst these people he felt intuitively that a viewless barrier lay between him and his pursuers, that it was the very last place a man in search of a runaway would glance at.

He was right. Whilst the char-a-banc still lingered on the chance of a last customer, the running policeman--he was walking now, appeared at the sea end of the street. He was a young man with a face like an apple, he wore a straw helmet--Northbourne serves out straw helmets for its police and straw hats for its horses on the first of June each year--and he seemed blown. He was looking about him from right to left, but he never looked once at the char-a-banc and its contents. He went on, and round the corner of the street he vanished, still looking about him.

A few moments later the vehicle started. The contents were cheerful and communicative one with the other, conversing freely on all sorts of matters, and Jones, listening despite himself, gathered all sorts of information on subjects ranging from the pictures then exhibiting at the cinema palace, to the price of b.u.t.ter.

He discovered that the contents consisted of three family parties--exclusive of the honeymoon couple--and that the appearance of universal fraternity was deceptive, that the parties were exclusive, the conversation of each being confined to its own members.

So occupied was his mind by these facts that they were a mile and a half away from Northbourne and in the depths of the country before a great doubt seized him.

He called across the heads of the others to the driver asking where they were going to.

”Sandbourne-on-Sea,” said the driver.

Now, though the Sandbournites hate the Northbournites as the Guelphs the Ghibellines, though the two towns are at advertis.e.m.e.ntal war, the favourite pleasure drive of the char-a-bancs of Sandbourne is to Northbourne, and vice versa. It is chosen simply because the road is the best thereabouts, and the gradients the easiest for the horses.

”Sandbourne-on-Sea?” cried Jones.

”Yes,” said the driver.

The vision of himself being carted back to Sandbourne-on-Sea with that crowd and then back again to Northbourne--if he were not caught--appeared to Jones for the moment as the last possible grimace of Fate. He struggled to get out, calling to the driver that he did not want to go to Sandbourne. The vehicle stopped, and the driver demanded the full fare--two s.h.i.+llings. Jones produced one of his sovereigns but the man could not make change, neither could any of the pa.s.sengers.

”I'll call at the livery stables as I go back,” said Jones, ”and pay them there.”

”Where are you stayin' in the town?” asked the driver.

”Belinda Villa,” said Jones.

It was the name of the villa against whose rails he had left the bicycle. The idiocy of the t.i.tle had struck him vaguely at the moment and the impression had remained.

”Mrs. Ca.s.s?”

”Yes.”

”Mrs. Ca.s.s's empty.”

This unfortunate condition of Mrs. Ca.s.s did not floor Jones.

”She was yesterday,” said he, ”but I have taken the front parlour and a bed-room this afternoon.”

”That's true,” said a fat woman, ”I saw the gentleman go in with his luggage.”

In any congregation of people you will always find a liar ready to lie for fun, or the excitement of having a part in the business on hand; failing that, a person equipped with an imagination that sees what it pleases.

This amazing statement of the fat woman almost took Jones' breath away.

But there are other people in a crowd beside liars.

”Why can't the gentleman leave the sovereign with the driver and get the change in the morning?” asked one of the weedy looking men. This scarecrow had not said a word to anyone during the drive. He seemed born of mischance to live for that supreme moment, diminish an honest man's ways of escape, and wither.