His words jerked the other two out of their trance. Mr. Jones heaved himself out of his chair, and set off down the slope in White's wake at a lumbering trot, while Janet followed, sobbing, "Oh dear, oh dear!" in an ineffectual manner that would certainly have infuriated White had he lingered to hear it.
By the time she and Samuel Jones reached the bridge, White had raised Wally in his arms, and was feeling for his heart. He was looking rather pale, and when he drew his hand away it was reddened with blood.
"Oh, is he dead? Oh, whatever shall we do?" cried Janet distractedly.
"Stop that screeching, and get something to stanch the blood!" snapped White. "Here, Sam, see what you can do! I don't know how far gone he is. I'll get hold of Chester at once. Thank God it's a Sunday, and he won't be out!"
Mr. Jones, whose cheeks had assumed a yellow pallor, knelt clumsily down beside Wally's body, and told Janet in an unsteady voice to tear a piece off her petticoat, or something.
Janet, however, had had her father's handkerchief thrust into her hand, and with trembling fingers was unbuttoning Wally's shirt to lay bare a neat, red hole in his chest. The sight of blood made her feel sick, but after the first few moments of startled horror she had managed to pull herself together and even had the presence of mind to call after her father, who was running back to the house, that it was of no use for him to ring up Dr Chester.
"He's out!" she shouted. "I saw his car pass the house from my bedroom window just before I came down! Going towards Palings!"
"Damn!" said White, checking for an instant. "All right, I'll get his partner!"
He vanished from their sight round a clump of azaleas, and Janet, swallowing hard, turned back to Wally's body.
Samuel Jones had struggled out of his coat, and rolled it into a pillow for Wally's head. His gaily striped shirt seemed out of keeping with his blanched, horror-stricken countenance. He said in a hushed voice: "It's no use, Miss Janet. He's gone."
"Oh no, don't say that! He can't have!" quavered Janet, holding White's handkerchief pressed to the wound in Wally's chest. "Oh, what an awful thing! Oughtn't we to try to give him brandy? Only, it says in my First-aid book that one should never '
"He's gone," repeated Jones, laying Wally's slack hand, which he had been holding by the wrist, down on the planks. "You can't feel a pulse. Not a flicker. Clean through the heart, if you ask me. My God, if I'd known this was going to happen I'd never have come!"
Janet was too busy fussing over Wally's body to pay much heed to this somewhat egoistic remark. Under her sharp directions, Jones reluctantly undid Wally's collar and tie; but when neither this nor the chafing of his hands produced in him the smallest sign of life, Janet realised that he must indeed be dead, and broke into gulping sobs of nervous shock. Mr. Jones, who was himself feeling, as he afterwards expressed it, a bit jumpy, with difficulty restrained himself from swearing at her, and tried, instead, to offer such comfort as lay in repeated assurances that it was not her fault, and she had done all that she could.
It seemed hours before White reappeared, and was, in actual fact, some seven minutes later. Neither Janet nor Mr. Jones, though both now convinced that Wally was dead, had moved from the bridge, each feeling vaguely that to leave Wally's body would be a callous action; but when White came hurrying into sight, Jones rose with a good deal of puffing and groaning to his feet, and stepped forward to meet him.
"No use, old man. He's gone," he said, for the third time that afternoon.
"God, what a ghastly thing!" muttered White, staring down at Wally. "I was afraid it was all up with him. But how the devil Oh, shut up, Janet! Stop that bloody row!"
Janet tried, ineffectively, to muffle her sobs in her handkerchief. Mr. Jones laid a hand on White's arm, saying in a deep voice: "Steady on, old man! We stand in the presence of death, you know."
"Oh, for God's sake don't give me any of that cant!" retorted White. "As though it wasn't damnable enough for a thing like this to happen without your adding to it with the sort of talk that's enough to make a man sick!"
Mr. Jones looked very much shocked by this explosion of temper, but excused it on the grounds that his host was naturally a little upset.
Janet struggled up from her knees, and leaned for support on the rustic rail of the bridge. "Did you manage to get hold of Dr Hinchcliffe?" she asked, between sniffs. "You were such ages!"
"Yes, of course I got hold of him, and the police, too," said White savagely. "They'll all be here before we know where we are, so don't try and move the body!"
Janet emerged from her handkerchief to show a startled face. "The police?" she stammered. "The police, father?"
"Yes, the police," he said. "You don't suppose poor old Wally died a natural death, do you?"
"An accident: it must have been an accident!"
"Pretty lucky sort of accident that gets a man clean through the heart!" replied White, with a short laugh.
"Come, come, Harold!" expostulated Jones uneasily, "you oughtn't to talk like that! After all, accidents do happen, you know."
"Yes, and one dam' nearly happened to Wally yesterday, from what I've been told!" said White.
"Oh dear, dear!" exclaimed Mr. Jones, in accents of profound distress. "I don't like getting mixed up in a case like this. A man in my position '
"No, and I don't like it either, so we can cut that bit!" replied White. A strangled cry from his daughter made him turn his head, saying angrily: "Will you stop making a fool of yourself? Anyone would think," He broke off, as the cause of this new disturbance became apparent to him. "Go on! Quick! Head her off!" he said.
It was, however, too late_ for Janet to obey this command. Vicky's Borzoi had, an instant earlier, bounded up to the wicket-gate, followed at a little distance by Vicky herself, wending her way along one of the narrow paths through the shrubbery.
"Hullo!" said that damsel. "What's all the noise about? Oh, Janet darling, was it you crying? Poor sweet, what's happened?"
Janet, who was really feeling extremely weak-limbed, stumbled towards the gate with her hands thrust out in a forbidding gesture. "Go back, Vicky! You mustn't come any nearer! Please go back!"
Vicky made no movement to retreat, but regarded Janet with bright-eyed interest. "Why? Have you got small-pox or something?" she inquired.
"Blast the girl!" said White under his breath. "Well, she's got to know sooner or later, and at least she isn't his daughter. Look here, Vicky, you run along up to the house, and tell your mother that Wally's met with an accident!"
"Oh no, has he? What kind of an accident?"
"Oh Vicky, I don't know how to tell you! We're afraid he's dead!" said Janet.
"Dead?" gasped Vicky. She looked from Janet's swollen face towards White, and then pushed Janet unceremoniously aside, and saw Wally lying in the middle of the bridge with Mr. Jones's coat under his head, and a red stain on his shirt. She did not faint, and since she had decided after her lunch that she was tired of the Tennis Girl, and had reverted to one of the Younger Set, and had made up her face accordingly, she did not change colour either. Instead, she clutched at the top of the gate, and said, "Oh gosh!" in rather a breathless voice. "Someone's shot him! I heard it, too!"
"You heard it? Did you see anyone?" asked White sharply.
"Oh no, I thought it was someone potting rabbits."
"Who, for instance? Got any idea who might have taken a gun out?"
Vicky shook her head. "No, "course not. I mean, I can't imagine, because everyone's out, now I come to think of it. Oh, I say, have I got to tell Ermyntrude? I haven't ever broken news to anyone, and I quite definitely don't want to.