Radmore stared at the small heaving back.  There could be no doubt that Timmy was speaking the truth now.  “All right,” he said quickly.  “I’ll do what you want, Timmy.  So cheer up!  I suppose you’ve got a big basket in which you can put your cat and her kittens?  While I put on some clothes, you can go and get her ready.  But I advise you for your own sake to be quiet.  Our game will be all up, if your mother wakes.  I simply shouldn’t dare to disobey her, you know.”  He smiled quizzically at the child, and, as he mentioned Janet, he lowered his voice instinctively.

CHAPTER XX

However long Radmore lives, he will never forget that strange drive through the autumn night.  Fortunately, from the two conspirators’ point of view, there were only old-fashioned stables at Old Place, and Radmore’s car was kept in the village in a barn which had been cleverly transformed by the blacksmith into a rough garage.

While he dressed, and, indeed, after he joined the boy downstairs, he had puzzled over Timmy—­over the mixture of cruelty and kindness the child had shown that evening.  He could not but recall, with a feeling of discomfort, the simple, innocent way in which the boy had explained why he wanted to take his cat, Josephine, into the drawing-room—­really to do a kindness to the mistress of The Trellis House!  It was somewhat disagreeable to reflect how he, Radmore, who rather prided himself on his knowledge of human nature, had been taken in.

Off the two started at last, creeping out of one of the back doors.  But in his agitation over the business of getting the cat and her kittens safely out of Old Place, Timmy had forgotten to put on a coat.  They were halfway down the avenue before Radmore noticed that the boy was shivering, and then, mindful of Janet, he ordered him to go back and get the warmest coat he could.

And then, while he waited impatiently in the avenue, Radmore visualised the extraordinary scene which had taken place in the drawing-room last evening.  Had the cat really seen anything of a supernatural nature?  Or was it only that she had been frightened by being suddenly brought into a room full of people?  If so, it was perhaps natural that she had blindly flown at the one stranger there.

At last Timmy returned, and they started off, neither speaking a word until they were clear of the village.  Radmore thought he knew every inch of the way, for he and Betty had once cycled together all over the countryside.  He checked a sigh as he thought of those days—­how happy he had been, with that simple, unquestioning happiness which belongs only to extreme youth.  He wondered if Betty ever remembered those far-off days.  They had come very near, the one to the other, last evening, and yet, from his point of view, theirs was an unsatisfactory kind of friendship.  It was as if she was always holding something back from him.  And then, while he was thinking of Betty, the little boy sitting by his side suddenly observed: