She stared at him blankly, wondering what more he had to say.
"Yes—go on. What then?"
"They handcuffed him, of course, and let him sit between two of them in the car. He was quite composed, had nothing to say. It was dark inside the car; they couldn't see him very well. One of the officers thought he leaned against him pretty heavily. When they got to the station he didn't get up, didn't move at all."
"What do you mean?"
"He did us a good turn, Esther. He was quite dead—poisoned, beyond doubt."
"Poisoned! I wonder how he did it?"
"It is amazing, isn't it? It was the stolid calmness of the fellow that put them off, I suppose. They think he must have taken something he had ready when he blew his nose."
She looked at him, her pupils dilated, trying to adjust her ideas to this new development. She felt strangely bewildered.
"It seems so—so stupid! I can't take it in. A clever man like that … first to run away, then to throw up the sponge…"
"I know, that's the way it strikes me, too; he seemed at the last so lacking in resource. Still, he was probably like one of those big, heavy cars that are wonderful on the straight, but can't turn quickly in a sharp corner. Take one of those two-ton Hispano-Switzers——"
"Or the Juggernaut," she suggested slowly.
"By Jove, yes, the Juggernaut … he was like that."
He looked at her with an awful realisation of how near her slender body had come to being ruthlessly crushed by the human machine—simply because it happened to put itself in the path. That he, too, had all unconsciously been in the path and had barely escaped destruction was now of minor importance.
For several seconds Esther stood with her hands against her heart, making an effort to grasp, to envisage, the whole of her strange adventure. Since she had set foot in Cannes two months before she had watched an old man done slowly to death, had saved a life that meant everything to her, and had been directly responsible for the events leading up to two deaths. What a part she had played! She could scarcely take it in….
She came out of her reverie to find herself in Roger's strong arms, his lips warm upon hers. Thought deserted her for a breathless moment.
"Do you know what I'm thinking?" he whispered in what might be termed the first conscious interval. "There may not be any pressing necessity for an immediate wedding, and yet…"
"Yes?" she murmured, her face against his, her heart beating fast.
"Well, a fortnight is a pretty long engagement—at least for me. What do you say?"
Her answer, somewhat muffled, came after a longish pause.
"Since you force me to admit it," she whispered against his neck, "it's quite long enough for me—too!"