Tuppence nodded. “Just our footsteps echoing on the pavement. What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“I thought I heard other footsteps behind us.”
“You’ll be seeing the ghost in a minute if you work yourself up like this,” said Tommy kindly. “Don’t be so nervy. Are you afraid the spook policeman will lay his hand on your shoulder?”
Tuppence emitted a shrill squeal.
“Don’t, Tommy. Now you’ve put it into my head.”
She craned her head back over her shoulder, trying to peer into the white veil that was wrapped all round them.
“There they are again,” she whispered. “No, they’re in front now. Oh! Tommy, don’t say you can’t hear them?”
“I do hear something. Yes, it’s footsteps behind us. Somebody else walking this way to catch the train. I wonder—”
He stopped suddenly, and stood still, and Tuppence gave a gasp.
For the curtain of mist in front of them suddenly parted in the most artificial manner, and there, not twenty feet away a gigantic policeman suddenly appeared, as though materialised out of the fog. One minute he was not there, the next minute he was—so at least it seemed to the rather superheated imaginations of the two watchers. Then as the mist rolled back still more, a little scene appeared, as though set on a stage.
The big blue policeman, a scarlet pillar box, and on the right of the road the outlines of a white house.