Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/349

Rh "Let them say what they choose…. I wonder what they would say …"

The Policeman stepped forward and across the road-way. He had heard nothing, and completely misunderstood all he had seen.

"Come, you must move on there, you two!" he commanded harshly.

Suddenly, as he said it, the light above was extinguished.

"Hullo!" He paused, half-way across. "Twelve o'clock already! Then what's taken my watch?"

A pair of feet tip-toed away in the darkness for a few yards, then broke into a nervous run.

As a matter of fact it still wanted five minutes of midnight. And while the Policeman fumbled for his watch and slipped back the slide of his lantern, the white flame leaped back into the blind eye above and blazed down as fiercely as ever.

"Something wrong with the connection, I suppose," said the Policeman, glancing up and then down at the solitary figure left standing under the lamp.

"Why, hullo! …" said he again.

But which was it?—the man or the woman?