Edgar Wallace

Planetoid 127 Edgar Wallace

Chap was lighting the stove, for, in spite of his roseate anticipations, he wished to be on the safe side, and he was in need of refreshment after a strenuous afternoon's punting. "He told the school the day the war would end to the very minute! And he foretold the big explosion in the gas works at Helwick he was nearly pinched by the police for knowing so much about it. I asked him last year if he knew what was going to win the Grand National and he nearly bit my head off. He'd have told Timothy Titus, because Tim's his favourite child." He helped the girl to land and made a brief survey of the bank. It was a wilderness of a place, and though his eyes roved around seeking a path through the jungle, his search was in vain. An ancient signboard warned all and sundry that the land was private property, but at the spot at which they had brought the punt to land the bank had, at some remote period, been propped up. "Do you want me to come with you?" asked Elsie, obviously not enamoured with the prospect of the forthcoming call. "Would you rather stay here?" asked Chap looking up from his stove. She gave one glance along the gloomy backwater with its weedy bed and the overhanging osiers. A water-rat was swimming across the still water and this spectacle decided her. "No; I think I will come with you," she said; and added, "I don't like rats." "That was a vole," said Tim, shying a stone in the direction of the swimming rodent. Her pretty face puckered in an expression of distaste. "It looks horribly like a rat to me," she said. Chap poured out the tea and the girl was raising it to her lips when her eyes caught sight of the man who was watching them from between the trees, and she had hard work to suppress the scream that rose to her lips. "What is it?"