Nothing Venture by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online Page B

Robert Leonard had said, “He is sure to walk—he is crazy for exercise.” She was quite sure that the “he” was Jervis. The driver was to “drive dangerously.” If “he” took a taxi, he was to do the best he could. He was to risk prison, and he was to earn five hundred pounds.
    An accident . The word sprang into her mind. It seemed to make a loud noise there. Nan felt as if someone had let off a gun close to her ear. The word deafened her. An accident —to Jervis. That was what they had been planning.
    As the noise of the word died down, everything else died down too—fear, shock, and the clamour of her thoughts. She found herself walking quickly and thinking clearly. The train got in at four-fifteen. She must go and meet Jervis and tell him what she had heard. She looked at her watch. It was five minutes to four. No station had been mentioned, but trains from Croyston ran to Victoria. If Jervis was coming up from King’s Weare, he would drive into Croyston and get a train there. Of course he might be coming from anywhere else.
    Nan pushed that away with both hands. If he wasn’t coming up from King’s Weare, there was nothing that she could do. But if she had overheard this wicked plan, it must be because she was meant to warn Jervis. She felt quite sure that he was coming up from King’s Weare, and that she would be in time to meet him and tell him what she had heard.
    She took a bus, came into the station with two minutes to spare, and reached the barrier as the train drew up beyond it. She wasn’t frightened any more. She was going to see Jervis, and everything was going to be all right.
    She watched him come down the platform carrying a suit-case, and laughed in her heart for pure joy. He had come, and he had lost the haggard, sleepless look which had pulled at her heart. He looked brown and well, and profoundly bored. Whatever it was that had brought him up to town, it was not anything which roused feelings of pleasure.
    He came striding up to the barrier, thrust a ticket at the collector, and went striding on. Nan ran after him, let him get clear of the crowd, and touched his arm. He turned, stared, took off his hat.
    Victoria Station became a place where anything might happen. It had the true atmosphere of romantic adventure. Nan was so inspired by it that a dimple came out on either side of her smile as she said,
    â€œYou didn’t expect to see me.”
    â€œDid you expect to see me?” he asked.
    Nan nodded.
    â€œI came to meet you.”
    â€œDid Page tell you I was coming up?”
    She shook her head.
    â€œNobody told me.”
    â€œThen how did you know?” said Jervis Weare.
    He had come up in response to an urgent telephone call from Mr Page. An hour after the call had come through he had been stepping into the train. How could anyone else have known that he was coming up? How could Nan Forsyth know? Just then and there it took him between the eyes that she was Nan Weare.
    Nan saw the dark colour rise in his face, and wondered what had brought it there. Her dimples trembled away. She said quickly,
    â€œI’ll tell you how I know. I’ve got things to tell you—important things.”
    They were standing still, with a stream of people flowing past them. A fat man swung a bag of golf-clubs within half an inch of Nan’s ear, and as she ducked and stepped aside, she heard an exclamation, and out of the stream there burst a small thin man with ginger hair and bright twinkling brown eyes. He had a Gladstone bag in one hand, a tin hat-box in the other, a camera slung from his shoulder, and an extremely ancient rucksack bound like a hump upon his back. He burst from the stream, cast the hat-box clanking upon the pavement, bumped down the Gladstone bag, and caught Jervis by one hand and the wrist of the other—the second hand being occupied with his suit-case. He pumped both arms up and down with