"Won't you be afraid?" Mabel asked. "Will it be safe--suppose you were caught?"
"As houses. I can't be," Gerald answered, and wondered that the question came from Mabel and not from Kathleen, who was usually inclined to fuss a little annoyingly about the danger and folly of adventures.
But all Kathleen said was, "Well, goodbye: we'll come and see you to-morrow, Mabel. The floral temple at half-past ten. I hope you won't get into an awful row about the motor-car lady."
"Let's detect our supper now," said Jimmy.
"All right," said Gerald a little bitterly. It is hard to enter on an adventure like this and to find the sympathetic interest of years suddenly cut off at the meter, as it were. Gerald felt that he ought, at a time like this, to have been the centre of interest. And he wasn't. They could actually talk about supper. Well, let them. He didn't care! He spoke with sharp sternness: "Leave the pantry window undone for me to get in by when I've done my detecting. Come on, Mabel." He caught her hand. "Bags I the buns, though," he added, by a happy afterthought, and snatching the bag, pressed it on Mabel, and the sound of four boots echoed on the pavement of the High Street as the outlines of the running Mabel grew small with distance.
Mademoiselle was in the drawing-room. She was sitting by the window in the waning light reading letters.
"Ah, _vous voici_!" she said unintelligibly. "You are again late; and my little Gerald, where is he?"
This was an awful moment. Jimmy's detective scheme had not included any answer to this inevitable question. The silence was unbroken till Jimmy spoke.
"He _said_ he was going to bed because he had a headache." And this, of course, was true.
"This poor Gerald!" said Mademoiselle. "Is it that I should mount him some supper?"
"He never eats anything when he's got one of his headaches," Kathleen said. And this also was the truth.
Jimmy and Kathleen went to bed, wholly untroubled by anxiety about their brother, and Mademoiselle pulled out the bundle of letters and read them amid the ruins of the simple supper.
"It is ripping being out late like this," said Gerald through the soft summer dusk.
"Yes," said Mabel, a solitary-looking figure plodding along the high-road. "I do hope auntie won't be _very_ furious."