Nothing Venture by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online Page A

of him.
    Nan walked out of the side street and stood behind the car, looking towards the door of No. 29. It was open. Miss Carew had disappeared, but before Nan had done more than reach the car Robert Leonard ran down the steps. Nan saw him for a moment in profile, and then the car was between them. He wore a light felt hat and a grey suit. His face was florid and tanned. He had a small fair clipped moustache and a straight line of light eyebrow. The eyelids beneath it had a crumpled look.
    Nan pressed close up against the car. She did not want Robert Leonard to see her. He must be a cousin of Miss Carew’s—she remembered that Rosamund was Rosamund Veronica Leonard—there was nothing odd that he should be with her. These thoughts just flickered in her mind. And then Robert Leonard’s voice disturbed them.
    â€œIt’s the four-fifteen all right. You’ll have to hurry. Let him come out of the station and get well away. He’s sure to walk—he has a craze for exercise.” A sneer just touched his voice. Nan thought involuntarily of scum on dirty water.
    â€œAnd supposin’ he takes a taxi—what abaht it then?” This was the driver, in a hoarse, throaty voice.
    â€œYou must do the best you can,” said Leonard impatiently. “And you’d better be getting going—you haven’t too much time.”
    He turned away. The driver’s voice followed him.
    â€œLook ’ere, guvnor, I’m not so keen on this job as I was.”
    Leonard turned round again.
    â€œTake it or leave it!” he said.
    â€œFive ’undred pound’s five ’undred pound,” said the hoarse, complaining voice.
    â€œExactly.”
    â€œAnd jug’s jug.”
    Leonard laughed.
    â€œA couple of months for dangerous driving! What’s that?”
    â€œWell, you’ve not got to do it,” said the driver. “And it might be a blank sight more than two months.”
    â€œWell,” said Leonard carelessly, “you needn’t touch it if you don’t want to. I promise you the money won’t go begging.”
    â€œOh, I’ll do it,” said the driver. “I’m a man of my word I am. Four-fifteen it is, and I’ll be getting along.”
    Nan heard the whirr of the starter. Her knees were shaking. The taxi began to move. It slipped away, leaving her shelterless.
    Robert Leonard, with his back to her, was mounting the steps of No. 29.

VIII
    Nan did not know that she was going to run, but she found herself running back down the side street, past the blank wall of No. 29, and breathlessly, blindly on. When at last she stopped running, she had no breath in her and she was shaking from head to foot. She had turned the corner and was in a street she did not know.
    She stood still—not thinking—getting back her breath. Then she began to walk again mechanically, her mind pulled this way and that by her clamouring thoughts. They all seemed to be shouting at once, and the one word which stood out above all the rest was “danger.”
    She set to work to quiet these clamouring thoughts, to make them speak reasonably, and to weigh what they said. It was very, very difficult, because, instead of being calm and judicial, she was quivering with shock and fear. The fear was not for herself, but for Jervis.
    Robert Leonard had come out of the house. He had spoken to the driver of the taxi. She tried to put together what he had said.
    Someone was arriving by the four-fifteen. The driver was to hurry up or he would be late. He was to earn five hundred pounds by doing something for which he might be sent to prison. There was something about getting two months for dangerous driving.
    The more Nan thought, the more an anguished fear took hold of her. For ten years she had believed that Robert Leonard had struck down Jervis Weare and left him to drown on Croyston rocks. Now she believed that there was to be another attempt upon his life.