The Moon out of Reach | Page 8

the chauffeur. She planted herself directly in its path, and waved so frantically that the driver slowed up, although with obvious reluctance. Someone looked out of the window, and with a vague, troubled surprise Nan realised that the cab's solitary passenger was of the masculine persuasion. But she was far beyond being deterred by a mere detail of that description.
"Are you going to Paddington?" she asked breathlessly.
"Yes, I am," came the answer. The speaker's voice had a slight, well-bred drawl in it, reminiscent of the public school. "Can I do anything for you?"
"You can drive me there, if you will," she replied, with the bluntness of despair. "My taxi's broken down."
"But with pleasure."
The man was out of his own cab in an instant, and held the door open while she paid her fare and ordered her luggage to be transferred. The driver showed no very energetic appreciation of the idea; in fact, he seemed inclined to dispute it, and, at the end of her patience, Nan herself made a grab at her hat-box with the intention of carrying it across to the other taxicab. In the same moment she felt it quietly taken from her and heard the same drawling voice addressing her recalcitrant driver.
"Bring that suit-case across and look sharp about it."
There was a curious quality of authority in the lazy voice to which the taxi-man responded in spite of himself, and he proceeded to obey the order with celerity. A minute later the transference was accomplished and Nan found herself sitting side by side in a taxi with an absolute stranger.
"He was a perfect beast of a driver!" was her first heart-felt ejaculation.
The man beside her smiled.
"I'm sure he was--a regular 'down-with-everything' type," he replied.
She stole a veiled glance at him. His face was lean, with a squarish jaw, and the very definitely dark brows and lashes contrasted oddly with his English-fair hair and blue-grey eyes. In one eye he wore a horn-rimmed monocle from which depended a narrow black ribbon.
"I can't thank you enough for coming to my rescue," said Nan, after her quick scrutiny. "It was so frightfully important that I should catch this train."
"Was it?"
Somehow the brief question compelled an explanation, although it held no suggestion of curiosity--nothing more than a friendly interest.
"Yes. I have a concert engagement to-morrow, and if I missed this train I couldn't possibly make my connection at Exeter. I change on to the South-Western line there."
"Then I'm very glad I sailed in at the crucial moment. Although you'd have been able to reach your destination in time for the concert even had the worst occurred to-day. You could have travelled down by an earlier train to-morrow; if everything else had failed."
"But they've fixed a rehearsal for ten o'clock to-morrow morning."
"That certainly does complicate matters. And I suppose, in any case, you'd rather not have to play in public immediately after a long railway journey."
"How do you know I play?" demanded Nan. "It's just conceivable I might be a singer!"
A distinct twinkle showed behind the monocle.
"There are quite a number of 'conceivable' things about you. But I heard Miss Nan Davenant play several times during the war--at concerts where special seats were allotted to the wounded. I'm sorry to say I haven't heard you lately. I've only just come back from America."
"Oh, were you in the war?" she asked quickly.
"Why, naturally." He smiled a little. "I was perfectly sound in wind and limb--then."
Nan flushed suddenly. She knew of one man who had taken no fighting part. Maryon Rooke's health was apparently more delicate than anyone had imagined, and his artistes hands were, so he explained, an asset to the country, not to be risked like hands made of commoner clay. This holding back on his part had been the thing that had tortured Nan more than anything else during the long years of the war, in spite of the reasons he had offered in explanation, not least of which was the indispensability of his services at Whitehall--in which he genuinely believed.
"It's simply a choice between using brains or brawn as cannon-fodder," he used to say. "I'm serving with my brain instead of with my body."
And Nan, attracted by Rooke's odd fascination, had womanlike, tried to believe this and to thrust aside any thoughts that were disloyal to her faith in him. But, glancing now at the clever, clean-cut face of the man beside her, with its whimsical, sensitive mouth and steady eyes, she realised that he, at least, had kept nothing back--had offered brain and body equally to his country.
"And now? You look quite sound in wind and limb still," she commented.
"Oh, I've been one of the lucky ones. I've only got a game leg as my souvenir of hell. I just limp a bit, that's all."
"I'm so sorry you've a