Battle, Superintendent (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories; Police -- England -- Fiction
Bundle jumped out and ran back. She had never yet run over anything
more important than a stray hen. The fact that the accident was hardly
her fault did not weigh with her at the minute. The man had seemed
drunk, but drunk or not, she had killed him. She was quite sure she
had killed him. Her heart beat sickeningly in great pounding thumps,
sounding right up in her ears.
She knelt down by the prone figure and turned him very gingerly over.
He neither groaned nor moaned. He was young, she saw, rather a
pleasant-faced young man, well dressed and wearing a small toothbrush
moustache.
There was no external mark of injury that she could see, but she was
quite positive that he was either dead or dying. His eyelids flickered
and the eyes half opened. Piteous eyes, brown and suffering, like a
dog's. He seemed to be struggling to speak. Bundle bent right over.
"Yes," she said. "Yes?"
There was something he wanted to say, she could see that. Wanted to say
badly. And she couldn't help him, couldn't do anything.
At last the words came, a mere sighing breath:
"_Seven Dials_ ... tell...."
"Yes," said Bundle again. It was a name he was trying to get
out--trying with all his failing strength. "Yes. Who am I to tell?"
"_Tell_ ... _Jimmy Thesiger_...." He got it out at last, and then
suddenly, his head fell back and his body went limp.
Bundle sat back on her heels, shivering from head to foot. She could
never have imagined that anything so awful could have happened to her.
He was dead--and she had killed him.
She tried to pull herself together. What must she do now? A
doctor--that was her first thought. It was possible--just
possible--that the man might only be unconscious, not dead. Her
instinct cried out against the possibility, but she forced herself to
act upon it. Somehow or other she must get him into the car and take
him to the nearest doctor's. It was a deserted stretch of country road
and there was no one to help her.
Bundle, for all her slimness, was strong. She had muscles of whipcord.
She brought the Hispano as close as possible, and then, exerting all
her strength, she dragged and pulled the inanimate figure into it. It
was a horrid business, and one that made her set her teeth, but at last
she managed it.
Then she jumped into the driver's seat and started off. A couple of
miles brought her into a small town and on inquiry she was quickly
directed to the doctor's house.
Dr. Cassell, a kindly, middle-aged man, was startled to come into
his surgery and find a girl there who was evidently on the verge of
collapse.
Bundle spoke abruptly.
"I--I think I've killed a man. I ran over him. I brought him along in
the car. He's outside now. I--I was driving too fast, I suppose. I've
always driven too fast."
The doctor cast a practised glance over her. He stepped over to a shelf
and poured something into a glass. He brought it over to her.
"Drink this down," he said, "and you'll feel better. You've had a
shock."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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