"Did they see? Was any one inside?"
"It was an empty car. Please be careful."
Foss was cold with rebuke. After that she lay still, isolated even from
Foss. Ten minutes went by and suddenly Foss spoke--"Did you have to go
far?"
And Alfred's hard voice answered "Yes."
Then she heard the two men working, tools clattering, murmured voices,
and in ten minutes Foss said: "Try the starting handle."
She heard the efforts, the labour of Alfred at the handle.
"He will kill himself--he will break a blood-vessel," she thought as she
listened to him. Every few minutes someone seized the handle and wound
and wound--as she had never wound in her life--on and on, past the very
limit of endurance. And under her ear, in the cold bones of the car, not
a sign of life! Not a sign of life, and, as though she could hear them,
all the clocks in the world struck nine.
The Guardians of the Honour would be in at breakfast now! they would be
sitting, sitting--discussing her absence. Stewart, upstairs, would be
looking out of the window, watching the river, perhaps answering
questions indifferently with her cool look. "Oh, in the garage--or
walking in the forest. I don't know." Cough! She jumped as the bones in
the bottom of the car moved under her, and the engine breathed. The
noise died out, Foss leapt to the handle and wound and wound, fiercely,
like a man who meant to make her breathe again or die.
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