Run! by Patricia Wentworth Page B

got ears like a cat.”
    â€œWhat did she hear?” said Sally breathlessly.
    â€œShe heard this person who called himself Hazeby make an appointment with Jackson. He began by asking about our trade plate and the Rolls, and Jackson said was there any complaint, and he said quite the reverse, and that the driver had been of service to a girl who was a client of his and she would like to thank him.”
    â€œ What ?”
    â€œYes. And as she’d only met him in the fog and couldn’t be sure she would know him again, would he wear a buttonhole and meet her on the steps of the B.B.C.”
    â€œYou’re making it up.”
    â€œI’m not. Daisy Callender swears to it. And that ass Jackson fell for it, poor chap, and said he was the driver and buzzed off to meet the girl. He was like that, you know—a bit of a chaser.”
    â€œYes,” said Sally. “And?”
    â€œHe was picked up dead in a Surrey lane early next morning—run over.”
    Sally put a hand on either arm of her chair. Her fingers closed so tightly upon the worn red leather that the knuckles stood out white. She did not say anything at all. Her lashes went down, and the colour went out of her face. James hoped very much that she wasn’t going to faint. She took a moment. Then she said quick and low,
    â€œIt might have been you.”
    â€œIt may have been an accident,” said James. He spoke quickly too, because quite suddenly he was most frightfully glad to be alive and it wouldn’t have been decent to say so—not when they were talking about Jackson.
    Sally shook her head.
    â€œNo, it wasn’t an accident.”
    And with that James burst into speech.
    â€œLook here, Sally, we can’t go on like this. You can’t just say it wasn’t an accident and expect me to leave it at that, because, you see, if it wasn’t an accident, it was murder, and if Jackson was murdered, he was murdered instead of me. He was a silly ass, and I’ve often thought he was an offensive ass, and he blobbed right into the middle of this thing because he was a silly ass, but the fact remains that he got murdered instead of me. I’m safe as long as they think they’ve wiped out the person who drove that car. I’m safe because Jackson was murdered. Don’t you see, that puts it up to me to get back on them? I can’t just stay safe and let them get away with it. You must see that.”
    Sally looked up, opened her lips to speak, shut them again, and looked down at the white stuff of her dress.
    â€œYes, I see,” she said.
    â€œWell, what are you going to do about it?”
    She took her hands from the arms of the chair and folded them in her lap.
    â€œIf I tell you things, it’s not going to be—safe—for you.”
    â€œI don’t want to be safe while other people are being murdered, thank you.”
    Sally nodded.
    â€œOne has that feeling,” she admitted.
    â€œWhat about you?” said James.
    She gave the faint laugh he had heard in the hayloft.
    â€œOh, me ?” she said. “I shouldn’t think it would make any difference. They mayn’t bother about me, or they may. They haven’t up till now.”
    â€œSally, who are they ?”
    She looked down at her hands—pretty, bare hands with no rings.
    Then she wasn’t engaged. And what did it matter whether she was or no?
    She said, “James—I’m going to tell you things. It isn’t easy. It’s not easy, because I’ve got to be fair, and it’s very difficult to be fair about a thing like this. I’ll tell you somethings that happened, and you must draw your own conclusions. I don’t want to tell you what I think about the things I’m going to tell you. I would like to know what you think about them. I’d like you to sit down.”
    James sat down in the uncertain chair.
    â€œAll right, Sally,” he said, “go