Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/151

 denly across the road. It caught the blue car amid-ships, and drove it against one of the poplars.

Scott was slightly cut about the face with broken glass, but with his little wife things were different. The lorry had smashed the side of the car, and the radiator had struck her.

Sorrell ran.

But before he reached the place Scott had got his wife out of the wrecked car and was carrying her towards the hotel.

He looked as he had never looked on the films, with his partner lying like a wounded bird in his arms.

"Man,—get a doctor, 'phone,—hurry."

And the driver of the lorry, a man with a face like "Old Bill's," was standing in the middle of the road, staring at the wreckage, and repeating the same words over and over again, though there was no one there to hear them.

"The bloomin' link-rod dropped. I can't think 'ow it came to 'appen. Just when they was passin' me—too. The bloomin' link-rod"

This accident on the London road within half a mile of Winstonbury was to give the Pelican an advertisement such as Sorrell had never dreamed of.

He had mounted a bicycle and ridden into the town for a doctor,—two doctors. The whole place was in a flurry, and when the Winstonbury doctors had seen the little lady and taken counsel with her husband there were 'phone messages and telegrams to London. For half an hour Sorrell was standing by the telephone with Duncan Scott fidgeting and smoking cigarettes beside him.

"Through yet?"

"No; sir."

"O,—damn it! Offer the girl a five-pound note, anything."

"Through now, sir."

Scott grabbed the receiver from him.

"Hallo,—hallo, is that Sir Magnus?—It is? Thank God. We have had a smash. The doctors—here,—pretty gloomy. Could you come down at once? Me?