After a time, Pob said:
“I wonder would you mind stopping? I rather think I shall cat.”
Frampton stopped the car, Pob tottered out and was sick.
“I say,” he said, “I wonder if you’ve a spot of brandy on you.”
“I’ll take you to some wonderful brandy in a few minutes,” Frampton said.
“What’s become of Pinkie?” Pob asked suddenly.
“Pinkie?”
“Yes. Pinkie-Punkie we call her. She was in the car with me.
“You mean, that she was in your father’s car?”
“Yes, of course.”
It gave Frampton a qualm, to think that he had left a corpse or wounded woman in that ruined car in the ditch. He had not examined the ruins thoroughly, in fact, he hadn’t examined them at all. It was possible that the broken corpse of Pinkie-Punkie, or worse still, her suffering body, that might still be saved, did lie under the wreck there.
“You said you were alone. You said nothing was the matter,” he growled. “Where had you been with Pinkie? Where were you coming from?”
“We’d been for a few cocktails.”
“Then, she is lying under the car still. We’d better go back and fetch her.”
He turned the car at a farm gate, and ran back. Pob told him about the emotional natures of Pinkie-Punkie and the Brass-Eye. “They were two of the best,” he said.
Frampton was cursing himself for not having examined the wrecked car for other passengers.
“You’re quite sure she was with you?” he asked.
“Yes, quite sure.”
“How are you sure?”
“We were having a row.”
“What were you having a row about?”
“It wasn’t really a row; it was more a discussion, if you know what I mean, what we’re to do for our next rag with the gun feller, you know, the bounder who was so rude to the Bynds, and turned the hounds out of Spirr, and had us up before the beaks. I said we’d get stink-bombs and stink him out of house and home. Feller’s an awful swine. Had us up before the beaks. Imagine a chap having a chap up before the beaks for a rag. So I said, stink-bombs and stink him out. But Pinkie said, she and Brass-Eye were all for bed bugs. They’d got some bed bugs in London; they wanted me to put them in the feller’s bed. Well, I mean to say; what?”
They reached the scene of the smash. Frampton left his car, but locked the ignition and took the key. He was not going to give Pob a chance to get away with it, just for a rag.
“She was sitting in front with you?” he asked.
“Yes, of course, cuddling me.”
Frampton could only judge that she’d been hurled over the fence into the field beyond. He had read of such things. He did not believe that anyone had run into the car from behind. This young sot had been tearing along, hell-for-leather, with a girl alongside and a belly full of brandy; naturally he had gone bang into the ditch, at sixty or seventy miles an hour.
“Pinkie will be the far side of the fence,” he thought, “with her silly head broken off its stalk.”
However, there was no Pinkie there. No Pinkie had fallen across the hedge; nor could anybody have been flung through it. It was unlikely that any chariot of fire had descended to translate the lady. It was certain that no lady, nor any part of a lady was in the ruins of the car.
“I seem to remember, now,” Pob said, “that Pinkie said she’d get out and see Sarah, and then I should call at the cross-roads and pick her up.”
“Which cross-roads?”
“Oh, some bally cross-roads, or other. I do wish you’d a spot of brandy. You saw how catty I was just now. A feller needs a spot of brandy after being catty. I say, will you go and pick up Pinkie?”
“But you don’t know where.”
“Yes, I do; at the cross-roads.”
“Which cross-roads?”
“I say, you know, you are a oner for asking questions. There aren’t so many cross-roads as all that.”
“She’ll have gone home, long ago,” Frampton said. “What I recommend is for you to come and have some special 1811 brandy I’ve got.”
“I say, have you really got 1811 brandy?”
“A little, for great nights.”
“I say, I seem to have met you somewhere.”
Frampton lured him to the car with the talk of brandy.
“I say,” Pob said, “I’ll drive. I know zackly where to find Pinkie.”
“Brandy first, Pinkie later,” Frampton said. “Wine always comes before women.”
He took the wheel, and set forth. Pob made two attempts to take the wheel; one was unexpected and nearly put the car across the road.
“Where is the brandy?” Pob called.
Presently, at five minutes past midnight, Frampton pulled up at Stubbington Manor.
“How about that brandy?” Pob called.
“You’ll want some of that,” Frampton said, “when your father hears what’s come to the car.”
Getting out, he rang the door-bell vigorously. Pob in the car cried:
“Now we’ll see who’s going to drive.”
However, the car did not respond. Frampton rang again, a lusty peal, and beat the knocker.
“There’s something wrong with this ignition,” Pob cried. “I can’t get the thing to start.”
“The petrol’s turned off inside the bonnet,” Frampton said.
“No? Is it really?”
He clambered out unsteadily, just as a man in night-gown and overcoat opened the door, which had been locked, chained, barred and bolted for the night.
“I’ve brought Mr. Pob home,” Frampton said. “He’s been in a car smash, close to the Stanchester cross-roads. His car is all in pieces there. You’d better warn the police and the A.A. people. It ought to have red lights. He’s had a concussion and ought to have a doctor at once.”
“Will you come in then, Mr. Edward?” the butler said.
Pob lurched unsteadily, but in the general direction of the door.
“I’m quite all right,” he said, “but, Bill, I want a spot of brandy, just to settle me before I go on to Sarah. And I want you to look at the car. Ignition’s gone.”
Mrs. Method-Methodde appeared at the door, and called:
“Is that Ted? Where have you been, Ted? You’re ever so late.”
Frampton drove off. They could deal with their darling in their own way, he thought; he himself had had enough of him. He hurried home, and at once telephoned to the police, that a big car was wrecked at the bend, and needed red lights upon it.
Not long after this, he received, by the post, a printed paper giving particulars of the sale of Stubbington Great Wood and the desirable residence of Tittups House.
There were photographs of Tittups House, and descriptions of its tennis-courts, gardens (kitchen, fruit and flower), and of the three hundred and fifty acres of magnificent timber, known as the Stubbington Great Wood. Frampton had been to Tittups, to return the Colonel’s call, and knew it as a big, derelict, hideous, dilapidated Georgian mansion, with no bathroom for anybody, and hateful little attics for the servants. The Wood he knew to be one of the outlying spurs of the Waste; it was all on mean, sick soil, and bore scrub and brush, and many small, stunted oaks, which never looked well. A forester with a large fortune to spend might have made something of it, but Purple Tittup had never spent any money on it, having none to spend. He had lived on at the house, and had shot the Wood thrice in each season. Twice a year, the hounds had met at Tittups, and had then drawn the Wood. Now it was all to be sold.
“It’s a rotten investment,” Frampton thought. “No one can use a house like that. No one will take it; no one will bid for it. Still,” he thought, “it will be going dirt cheap, with all the Wood. I’m not sure, that I won’t put in for it, to settle the Hunt from hunting on this side of the valley for good and all. Why hadn’t that Annual-Tilter swine the grace to apologise in Court, instead of talking his tommy-rot about everyone being free to follow foxes anywhere? Vermin, quotha; chaps like that are vermin, in this land.”