‘It was my last act of spying,’ he said. ‘Why dare you not search for your father, Miss Craig?’
‘Because--because I might find more than I wished to find.’
‘You talk in riddles,’ he said firmly. ‘We can do nothing here; let us go back to Hockiffe.
I will accompany you, and on the way you shall answer my questions. I have many to put to you. Leave everything to me; imagine that I am your brother. I have often laughed at the man’s phrase to a woman, “I would lay down my life for you,” but at this moment I feel what it means. Do not mistake me; do not think I am talking wildly. Perhaps I have a better idea of your trouble than you think. But, in any case, you must trust me as you trusted me when first you saw me. You must rely on me. Come, let us go.’
She rose and moved towards the door, ‘Thanks,’ she said, nothing more than that--‘thanks.’
In one part of his mind Richard wondered at himself, in another he felt curiously and profoundly happy.
They passed northwards through the night of London in the Décauville car, Richard and Teresa side by side on the front seats, old Mrs. Bridget in her black alpaca behind, up Regent Street, along Oxford Street, up the interminable Edgware Road, through Kilburn, and so on to Edgware and the open road and country.
‘Bridget knows all my secrets, Mr. Redgrave,’ said Teresa. ‘Moreover, she has no ears unless I wish it.’
‘Sure, miss,’ said Bridget, ‘more gets into my head than goes out. ’Tis for all the world like a Jew’s pocket.’
This fragment of conversation was caused by Richard’s sudden stoppage in the middle or a remark about Micky, who, Teresa told him, had disappeared concurrently with her father.
‘What were you going to say about Micky?’
‘I was going to say,’ Richard answered, ‘that things are not what they seem.’
‘Yes, like me, only rather more professional.’
‘Bridget told me this morning that she had heard poor father and Micky at high words in the middle of last night. After that she says there was a silence for a long time, and then father called her up and gave her the message for you.’
The sentences were spoken without hesitation, and yet in a strangely unnatural voice.
‘You’re forgetting one little thing, miss.’
‘If I am to help you I must be in possession of the facts.’