Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/55

 called out sharply, "Enrico! Enrico!" There was a silence and she repeated the call and out of the bushes came a chauffeur, dark and smartly dressed. She loosed on him a torrent of nervous, impatient abuse. She was in great haste, she said. She was already late. Why had he kept her waiting while he amused himself pinching servant girls?

It was the vulgar performance of a well-bred woman whose nerves were frayed.

Then Father d'Astier proposed that they take Mr. Winnery in the motor. Turning, he said, "If you go back in the fiacre you'll have no dinner until nearly midnight."

The driver of the fiacre grumbled at being deserted after darkness on a road so lonely, but Winnery, in an unbalanced moment of extravagance, paid him for the whole journey and a little over and he retired, still mumbling his indignation.

It was the Princess herself who drove. She had Father d'Astier by her side and Mr. Winnery was placed in the back with the sulking Enrico. They bade Miss Fosdick good-night and the car suddenly sprang forward with a wild roar, violating the silence of the remote valley. The sound echoed and re-echoed through the hills, shattering the strange mood that had settled on Winnery. He was alive, after all. It was the twentieth century. This was a voiture de grand sport in which he had clearly found a perilous seat.

It shot through the green tunnel at a terrifying speed, so that the leaves whisked by with a hissing sound. Looking back he saw the black figure of Miss Fosdick, still bearing the electric candle, dis-