Page:Edgar Wallace - The Man who Knew.djvu/162

 "Oh, blow work!" he cried hilariously. "I cannot think of work to-day."

At two-fifteen he was waiting in the vestry for the girl's arrival, chatting with his friend the rector. He had arranged for the ceremony to be performed at two-thirty; and the witnesses, a glum verger and a woman engaged in cleaning the church, sat in the pews of the empty building, waiting to earn the guinea which they had been promised.

The conversation was about nothing in particular—one of those empty, purposeless exchanges of banal thought and speech characteristic of such an occasion.

At two-thirty Frank looked at his watch and walked out of the church to the end of the road. There was no sign of the girl. At two-forty-five he crossed to a providential tobacconist and telephoned to the Savoy and was told that the lady had left half an hour before.

"She ought to be here very soon," he said to the priest. He was a little impatient, a little nervous, and terribly anxious.