THE ENCOUNTER AT MIDHURST
"You can always," said Mr. Hoopdriver, "turn round if you don't like it, and go back the way you came."
"Oh-o!" said the other man in brown. "That's it! I thought as much."
"Did you?" said Mr. Hoopdriver, quite at sea, but rising pluckily to the unknown occasion. What was the man driving at?
"I see," said the other man. "I see. I half suspected—" His manner changed abruptly to a quality suspiciously friendly. "Yes—a word with you. You will, I hope, give me ten minutes."
Wonderful things were dawning on Mr. Hoopdriver. What did the other man take him for? Here at last was reality! He hesitated. Then he thought of an admirable phrase. "You 'ave some communication———"
"We'll call it a communication," said the other man.
"I can spare you the ten minutes," said Mr. Hoopdriver, with dignity.
"This way, then," said the other man in brown, and they walked slowly down the North Street towards the Grammar School. There was, perhaps, thirty seconds' silence. The other man stroked his moustache nervously. Mr. Hoopdriver's dramatic instincts were now fully awake. He did not quite understand in what rôle he was cast, but it was evidently something dark and mysterious. Doctor Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, and Alexander Dumas were well within Mr. Hoopdriver's range of reading, and he had not read them for nothing.
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