car and moved round to his cycle. He tipped it up on its saddle and handlebars and then turned the crank-wheel and chain vigorously. The whir of the dynamo disturbed the stillness of the summer night. Herbert threw his cigarette away and stumbled into the lane, moving round to peer into the now fully illuminated engine.
“Yes, I think I can do it,” he said. “Keep on turning.”
From the toolbox under the battery he took out a set of spanners, a screwdriver, and jack-knife. Laboriously he set about the task he had commenced in the dark.
“I think,” Vincent said presently, cranking steadily and projecting the lamp beam, “that girls like Betty are not far short of a public menace. They get fellows all tied up. She’s got me hating you and you hating me—and both of us hating Tom Clayton. Why? Because all of us love her.”
“Thought you said you didn’t,” Herbert muttered as he half lay in the engine.
“Confound me, I do.” Vincent sighed. “I was piqued at her going out with you. That’s my trouble. I talk too big. I’m a pot lion. So help me, Herby, I’d do just anything for her.… But I don’t see why I should play second fiddle either. Only one way to get Betty, you know, and that is to cut out the opposition.”
Vincent stopped turning the crank suddenly and the gloom dropped. Herbert turned in surprise.
“What’d you do that for? I can’t see what I’m doing.”
“Only changing position,” Vincent said. “Shan’t be a minute.”
Herbert waited and there was a dim vision of Vincent moving about in his white sweater. He was stooping, presumably to haul the machine round.
Then far down the lane two brilliant headlamps shafted their beams into the dark sky from over a rise.
“Tom Clayton, a million to one,” Herbert said, gazing. “Coming from the direction of Langhorn. That shows how much truth there was in your tomfool accusations about Betty. She’s okay, I tell you. She’s the best girl that ever—”
The headlights swung full on him at that moment and there was the sound of a heavy truck engine. It was perhaps half a mile away down the lane. Herbert turned to Vincent with a grin of triumph. Vincent was still stooping, then he straightened up abruptly.
But for Herbert the world suddenly seemed to explode. A blinding impact struck him and his senses smashed into a million darknesses. There was an intense quiet and the world was void and without form.
CHAPTER TWO
Betty Shapley returned home, Clayton seeing her to the front door. Her parents merely looked at her as she entered; they had long since disavowed the mind-crushing tactics of the Victorians. They knew that Betty could look after herself and had the redeeming virtue of being truthful. To her the testing of three eligible young men was no crime—and she was capable of intense loyalty when she chose. As ever, there was a bright fire in the Shapley kitchen.
“I’m only late,” Betty said, moving to the table where supper awaited her, “because Herby’s car broke down. I had to walk two miles and then I stopped at Tom Clayton’s to ask him to pick Herby up. There! You can hear his breakdown truck starting off down the back now.”
“In fact, a bad end to a perfect day?” her mother smiled as she got up. “Well, I know Herby. He’s a shy boy but a nice one.… What do you want for your supper, love? There’s some cold pork pie.”
Betty nodded. “That will do fine.”
Joseph Shapley, seated by the fire with his pipe, was a big, lumbering man. His eyes were pale green, his hair and eyebrows white. Not many would have guessed he was only fifty-eight. He had reached that stage in life when he no longer watched the development of his daughter with excited interest but subdued astonishment. He never could quite imagine where the years had gone between her going to school and walking out in turn with three of Langhorn’s young bachelors. But never in her life had he raised a word of unjust protest against Betty.
Betty’s mother was different. If she felt there was something to question, she wou1d question it—with the forthrightness that Betty herself could reveal on occasions. She had more imagination, more refinement, than her husband. She was tall and grey-haired, graceful even yet, with the kind of understanding blue eyes that brought schoolchildren to the store to buy ice cream in the summer months. At fifty-two she had come to realize with extreme clearness that life is exactly what you make it.
“Did Tom like being dug out to go to Herby’s rescue?” Betty’s father asked.
“Of course not, Dad! But somebody’s got to do it, and Tom has got a garage.…”
Joseph Shapley grinned. “One rival drags another rival home, and the cause of the rivalry has her supper in comfort. Only a woman would think of a scheme like that.”
“Only a man would see fit to create rivalry anyway, Father,” Mrs. Shapley declared, as she made a cup of tea. “Nothing wrong with good, healthy competition. Here you are, love,” she added, setting the cup at the girl’s elbow.
Betty said: “I shan’t take long over supper. I want to watch Tom towing Herby into his garage. Just to make sure he’s safe. I wouldn’t like to go to bed not knowing what had happened to him…he’s a bit of a dear.”
“Then why don’t you put him out of his misery and tell him so?” her father demanded.
Betty hesitated, then: “I don’t really love him, Dad! That’s what I have been trying to make sure of. He’s too shy; he even seems half afraid to be alone with me. Can’t imagine why he should.”
Her mother smiled faintly. “I can.”
“Well, anyway, I think I shall tell him that I don’t really mean it. Only decent thing to do.” Betty cut a piece of pie decisively. “And I must do the same with Tom. He’s all right, but he’s too moody and takes such a long time to think things out. Besides, he’s interested in astronomy and science and stuff, as a sideline, and that to me makes him awfully boring sometimes.”
“Which means that you have only Vincent Grey left,” Betty’s mother said.
“He’s the one, Mum,” Betty said simply. “He’s big and cheerful and not afraid to take chances. And he’s the only one who has found a nickname for me! It’s—it’s ‘Cuddles’. And he can whistle like a bird, too.”
“Have to do more than that to keep a wife,” Joseph Shapley remarked dryly.
“He does, Dad. He’s doing very well in that solicitor’s office. He may talk a lot, but he’s the one I really like.”
Betty’s father wheezed to his feet. “Well, lass, I can’t be expected to see the world through the rosy spectacles of a girl of nineteen, but what’s wrong with you staying in this business of ours for a few more years? You’d perhaps get more settled ideas by then.”
“We’ve gone into this before. Top and bottom of the matter is I don’t like the business.” Betty shrugged. “You know I dislike routine. I want to see and do things.”
“All right, Bet, if that’s the way you want it. Vincent seems a bit overpowering to me, though, but maybe you know him better than I do.… Well. I’m going on to bed,
