The Seven Dials Mystery

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Book: Read The Seven Dials Mystery for Free Online
Authors: Agatha Christie
nevertheless it must have struck him in passing. He was lying face downwards on the road, and he lay ominously still.
    Bundle jumped out and ran back. She had never yet run over anything more important than a stray hen. The fact that the accident was hardly her fault did not weigh with her at the minute. The man had seemed drunk, but drunk or not, she had killed him. She was quite sure she had killed him. Her heart beat sickeningly in great pounding thumps, sounding right up in her ears.
    She knelt down by the prone figure and turned him very gingerly over. He neither groaned nor moaned. He was young, she saw, rather a pleasant-faced young man, well dressed and wearing a small toothbrush moustache.
    There was no external mark of injury that she could see, but she was quite positive that he was either dead or dying. His eyelids flickered and the eyes half opened. Piteous eyes, brown and suffering, like a dog's. He seemed to be struggling to speak. Bundle bent right over.
    “Yes,” she said. “Yes?”
    There was something he wanted to say, she could see that. Wanted to say badly. And she couldn't help him, couldn't do anything.
    At last the words came, a mere sighing breath:
    “Seven Dials... tell...”
    “Yes,” said Bundle again. It was a name he was trying to get out - trying with all his failing strength. “Yes. Who am I to tell?”
    “Tell... Jimmy Thesiger...” He got it out at last, and then, suddenly, his head fell back and his body went limp.
    Bundle sat back on her heels, shivering from head to foot. She could never have imagined that anything so awful could have happened to her. He was dead - and she had killed him.
    She tried to pull herself together. What must she do now? A doctor - that was her first thought. It was possible - just possible - that the man might only be unconscious, not dead. Her instinct cried out against the possibility, but she forced herself to act upon it. Somehow or other she must get him into the car and take him to the nearest doctors. It was a deserted stretch of country road and there was no one to help her.
    Bundle, for all her slimness, was strong. She had muscles of whipcord. She brought the Hispano as close as possible, and then, exerting all her strength, she dragged and pulled the inanimate figure into it. It was a horrid business, and one that made her set her teeth, but at last she managed it.
    Then she jumped into the driver's seat and started off. A couple of miles brought her into a small town and on inquiry she was quickly directed to the doctor's house.
    Dr. Cassell, a kindly, middle-aged man, was startled to come into his surgery and find a girl there who was evidently on the verge of collapse.
    Bundle spoke abruptly.
    “I - I think I've killed a man. I ran over him. I brought him along in the car. He's outside now. I - I was driving too fast, I suppose. I've always driven too fast.”
    The doctor cast a practised glance over her. He stepped over to the shelf and poured something into a glass. He brought it over to her.
    “Drink this down,” he said, “and you'll feel better. You've had a shock.”
    Bundle drank obediently and a tinge of colour came into her pallid face. The doctor nodded approvingly.
    “That's right. Now I want you to sit quietly here. I'll go out and attend to things. After I've made sure there's nothing to be done for the poor fellow, I'll come back and we'll talk about it.”
    He was away some time. Bundle watched the clock on the mantelpiece. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes - would he never come?
    Then the door opened and Dr. Cassell reappeared. He looked different - Bundle noticed that at once - grimmer and at the same time more alert. There was something else in his manner that she did not quite understand, a suggestion of repressed excitement.
    “Now then, young lady,” he said. “Let's have this out. You ran over this man, you say. Tell me just how the accident happened?”
    Bundle explained to the

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