Free The Watersplash by Patricia Wentworth Page B

matter of fact Edward and I are fixing up a cinema, and I find I can get off tonight. Is he there?”
    “No, he isn’t. He’s frightfully busy, you know, taking over from Mr. Barr.”
    “But not on a Saturday afternoon! He simply can’t be—it isn’t civilized! When will he be back?”
    “I haven’t the slightest idea.”
    “Darling, you’re not being a bit helpful! I suppose I couldn’t ring him up at Mr. Barr’s?”
    “I shouldn’t think so.”
    “Susan, you really aren’t being any help at all! We do want this evening together so much, and it’s so frustrating not being able to get hold of him just when I’ve found I can have the time off!”
    “I’m sorry, Clarice, but I don’t see what I can do. He wasn’t back last night until a quarter past ten. He might be earlier tonight, or he might not—he just didn’t say. I can tell him you rang up.”
    Clarice gave that pretty, silly laugh again.
    “Well, it won’t be much good if he isn’t going to be in till midnight, will it? Look here, I’ll call up again after tea. We could still go over to Embank and see the big picture and have supper afterwards. What a nuisance it is having to work! It spoils all one’s best dates, doesn’t it?”
    Edward came home at half past four. Susan said,
    “Clarice Dean rang up.”
    “What about?”
    “You and a cinema. She says she can get the evening off.”
    “It’s more than I can.”
    “She’ll be ringing again after tea.”
    “Well, you’d better tell her—”
    Susan shook her head.
    “She’ll want to speak to you.”
    “Say I haven’t come in.”
    “Miss Ora probably saw you go by. Besides—”
    “You cannot tell a lie? I remember you were really quite mentally deficient in that direction!”
    Nobody likes to be accused of a virtue. Susan’s fair skin showed a decided flush.
    “If people want to have lies told, I think they ought to do it themselves!”
    “Well, I should do it much better than you. I’ve had more practice.”
    She gave him her straight, candid look.
    “Have you?”
    His face darkened.
    “Oh, yes—a great deal—in the best of all possible schools. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive, as the poet says! And I assure you it puts a fine edge on the practice when you know that if you do let the web get tangled it’s going to cost you your life. Atropos with the shears —and a fine clean cut across your weaving!”
    She said, “Don’t!” and could have bitten her tongue out. He was talking to her, really talking, and she must needs cry out because it hurt.
    And then all of a sudden he smiled that rather twisted smile and said,
    “All right, you shan’t tell lies for me, and I won’t tell them to you. I don’t know whether it’s a compliment or not, but for what it’s worth, I think it would probably always be easier to tell you the truth.”
    Clarice rang up at five o’clock, and this time she rang from the Miss Blakes’ sitting-room with Miss Ora and Miss Mildred lingering out the last cup of tea and stretching their ears to hear what was said. It was, of course, quite easy to hear what Clarice was saying. They were neither of them at all deaf. But to catch what was being said at the other end of the line in Emmeline’s little back room was another matter. An exasperating murmur in the throat of the instrument was all that they could distinguish. They would not even have known that the murmur was being contributed by Edward Random if it had not been for Clarice’s repeated use of his name.
    “Edward! At last! Darling, where have you been all day? I was to ring you up, and I simply couldn’t get you! Susan kept on saying you were out and she didn’t know when you would be coming in! Quite maddening! Do you know, I began to have just a very, very faint suspicion that she didn’t really want us to fix up that cinema.”
    As soon as he could stem this persistent ripple Edward said,
    “It’s no good nourishing that sort of