Fear by Night by Patricia Wentworth Page B

below—“You blank, blank, blank little fool, you!”
    Ann was so dazed that she just stared at him and went on staring. There was a little bright light just overhead. It showed Jimmy Halliday’s face not six inches from her own, all puffed and scarlet under the wet sandy hair, whilst angry words and oaths came pattering out of his mouth like hailstones. She ought to have been angry, or frightened, or grateful, because she had very nearly been drowned, and he was swearing at her, and it began very dimly to occur to her that he had saved her life. But she wasn’t angry or frightened or grateful, or anything at all except numb and dumb. Her head didn’t feel as if it belonged to her, and when he gave her a push which sent her down the companion, she sat down in a huddle on the bottom step and shut her eyes. The wind drowned Jimmy Halliday’s voice and the furious bang of the door above her.
    She might have sat there for a long time if the boat had not been rolling so. She got up and made her way to her own cabin and lay down upon the berth. The squall lessened. The boat rolled. Once she heard Jimmy Halliday’s voice pitched on a note of rage. He was swearing at somebody else now, which was a comfort. She rather gathered that he was swearing at Gale Anderson.
    Then the voice was gone. She fell asleep.

CHAPTER VIII
    They landed next day in the very early morning. The wind had dropped and the rain was coming down, not heavily but in a fine weave of mist and water which blotted out both sea and hills. There remained a muddy foreshore sprinkled with boulders and coated with a yellowish rust, and above it a stretch of wet grey road, and a car.
    The driver left his seat, exchanged a few inaudible words with James Halliday, and rowed off to the yacht. Gale Anderson took his place at the wheel. Mrs. Halliday and Riddle were helped in. Ann took a back seat and was barricaded with suit-cases. The rest of the luggage went on behind, and with Jimmy Halliday on the seat beside the driver they began to climb towards the unseen hills.
    It wasn’t a very cheerful journey. Ann’s head ached. Riddle dwelt with mournful pride upon the certainty that she would presently be sick. And Mrs. Halliday, with her feet in cloth-topped button boots raised comfortably upon a couple of suit-cases, put her head back against a scarlet leather cushion and slept. She not only slept, but she snored in an awful rhythmic manner which reminded Ann of a cornet solo in an advanced modern symphony. The mist streamed by. Something rattled at the back of the car. It had the sound of metal upon metal, and it fretted Ann almost to screaming point. She put her hand to her head and felt the lump upon it. Something must have hit her very hard to make a lump like that. All through the business of getting up and getting Mrs. Halliday packed and landed Ann had been wondering just what it was that had raised that lump. She felt perfectly certain that she had not hit herself. She had been hit. Something had banged down upon her head and knocked her flying, and she had gone down clutching and slithering to the black drowning water that was waiting for her.
    She looked round at Jimmy Halliday’s bullet head with its short sandy hair and felt a belated gratitude. If he hadn’t clutched her, she wouldn’t be here now. She wondered where she would be. Her body would be swinging to and fro with the tide, and she would be somewhere else. The thought made her feel vaguely disembodied. She came back with difficulty to the question of what had hit her. There slid into her mind Gale Anderson’s voice and Gale Anderson’s words: “Damn fool to send her down! There’ll never be a better opportunity.”
    They drove on into the mist and rain.
    Presently Mrs. Halliday woke up and told a cheerful story about a young man that was hanged for sheep stealing.
    â€œThe last man in England to be hanged for it he was, and nothing but