Unknown Read Online Free PDF Page A

side of it. Not very tight, but very well run.”
    “Not, by any chance, by a very cheerful little man with shock of red hair? It was! Oh, splendid! I often stop there myself. What’s more, I’m pretty certain I’ve still got a bill somewhere for a small repair he did for me once. I'll hunt it out and then we’ll go to the village and ring through. I’ll go and hunt that bill at once—and there’s a letter I want to write to my next-door neighbour. No, not M r. Lindsay. On the other side, the Rosebud. His name is Robert Dexter. Another runaway, when he can manage it! I won’t be long.”
    She went through to her sleeping cabin, found the bill without difficulty and then took a writing case from a drawer. For several moments she sat, frowning thoughtfully. Then, rapidly, she wrote:
    “Dear Rob,
    I don’t know if you’re planning to come down here this weekend, but if you possibly can, please do.
    Something has happened which I find both startling and astonishing and I want to know whether you agree with me.
    I don’t think you’ll feel you’ve wasted your time, but I must warn you that if you think as I do, you will be in for a shock. But please don’t show it — that’s important.
    I’m sorry to be so mysterious, but you must judge for yourself.
    Yours,
    Alice.”
     

CHAPTER TWO
    ROSAMUND waited anxiously while Miss Coates made the telephone call.
    “Tom? Oh, good! Look, Tom, a young friend of mine—a fair-haired girl in a rather battered blue mini car—stopped at your garage this morning for petrol. She thinks she may have dropped her purse—she did?” Miss Coates made a thumbs-up sign to Rosamund, standing outside the telephone kiosk. “Splendid! Well, look, it’s rather late now to come to collect it. Tomorrow? About lunch time? Right! What? Yes, we’d like that! Thank you very much, Tom.”
    She rang off and came out to join Rosamund, beaming all over her pleasant face.
    “Yes, you did drop it there, just as you got back into the car. But Tom didn’t see it until you’d started off, and though he shouted to you, you didn’t hear. He’s put it in his safe. I told him we’d pick it up tomorrow.”
    “O-oh! ” Rosamund breathed a deep sigh of relief.
    'Yes, you’ve been lucky,” Miss Coates acknowledged. “Tom is as honest as the day. And his wife is a delightful girl—a first-class cook, too. Which reminds me, Tom asked me if we’d have a meal there as their guests and I said we would. All right?”
    “Yes, of course,” Rosamund’s eyes sparkled. “You know, when I was there this morning there was something cooking which smelt quite heavenly—something with onions in it. It made my mouth water and I almost asked if I could have a meal there, only—” the sparkle faded, “I wanted to get on—”
    “Well, we’ll make up for it tomorrow,” Miss Coates promised. “And now we’d better get back. It was fortunate for us that the rain stopped long enough for us to get here, but the clouds are blowing up again.”
    Neither of them spoke much on the way back, Rosamund because the sense of sheer relief obsessed her to the exclusion of everything else, Miss Coates because she was genuinely glad that Rosamund had been proved to have told the truth and far from displeased that her own perspicacity had assured her that it would be so.
    When they reached the gate in the hedge leading to the canal, they had a brief glimpse of John. He was swabbing down the deck and might or might not have seen them, but certainly he let: go of his mop and vanished inside with considerable speed.
    Miss Coates 'gave an unregenerate little chuckle which made Rosamund turn and look enquiringly at her.
    “Just I was thinking how pleasant it will be to inform that young man that I was right and he was wrong!”
    “About me telling the truth?” Rosamund asked, and when Miss Coates grinned and nodded, she looked doubtful.
    “But is it worth worrying about?” she asked. “I mean, it wasn’t only a