He glanced thoughtfully across towards where a number of khaki-clad figures were dimly visible behind the railings. Geraldine looked at him severely.
“Of course,” she began, “if you really think that I don’t know the difference between the report of a pistol and a rifle shot--”
“I was wrong,” he confessed. “Forgive me. You see, my head was a little turned. Some one did deliberately fire at me, and I believe it was from a grey racing-car. I couldn’t see who was driving it and it was out of sight almost at once.”
“But I never heard of such a thing!” she exclaimed. “Why on earth should they fire at you? You haven’t any enemies, have you?”
She stepped from the car and came lightly over to his side.
“Take your handkerchief away,” she ordered. “Don’t be foolish. You forget that I am a certificated nurse.”
He raised his handkerchief and she looked for a moment at the long scar. Her face grew serious.
“Another half-inch,” she murmured,--“Hugh, what an abominable thing! A deliberate attempt at murder here, at nine o’clock in the morning, in the Park! I can’t understand it.”
“Well, I’ve been under fire before,” he remarked, smiling.
“Get into my car at once,” she directed. “I’ll drive you to a chemist’s and put something on that. You can’t go about as you are, and it will have healed up then in a day or two.”
“Of course, I’m a little bewildered about it still,” she went on. “I suppose you ought to go to the police-station. It was really a deliberate attempt at assassination, wasn’t it? If you had been--”
She paused and he completed her sentence with a humorous twinkle in his eyes.
“If I had been a person of importance, eh? Well, you see, even I must have been in somebody’s way.”
She drove in silence for some little distance.
“Hugh,” she asked abruptly, “why did the War Office send you down to Market Burnham after that Zeppelin raid?”
His face was suddenly immovable. He turned his head very slightly.
“Captain Granet came to see me yesterday afternoon. He seemed as much surprised as I was. You were a little hard on him, weren’t you?”
“But why were you sent down?” she persisted. “I can’t imagine what you have to do with a Zeppelin raid.”
“I really don’t think it is worth while your bothering about the bandage,” he said.
