I turned off all the lights, and went out to reconnoiter the garden and the back.

“Careful,” Sandorski suggested.

“What the hell do you think I’m going to be?”

“Right, Colonel, my lad! But I just remembered again that Hiart thinks Lex is dead. If you were too, how convenient for him! Don’t say he will. Doesn’t like violence. But it must occur to him.”

I quietly unlocked the garage door. Lex slipped in, keeping to the shadows, and lay down in the back of the car where we covered him with a rug and his splendid overcoat. Sandorski threw in the briefcase, wrapped up in a brown paper parcel, and told him what it was. At the last moment he dashed back into the house to cut the telephone wires. I jumped out too, and locked the garage, so that, if we hadn’t been watched, it wouldn’t be immediately obvious that my car was out.

It was now six-fifteen, and exactly half an hour since the inspector had left. We couldn’t have more than a minute or two to get away. As a matter of course I turned to the right, up the valley, for I couldn’t go the other way in case I ran slap into the police car racing out from Dorchester; but I had barely changed up into top before Sandorski shouted:

“Stop! Damn!”

I thought he had forgotten something essential, and that we were done.

“Straight into the net! Rabbits! Attack, ha? Attack, even if you’ve got to run! Turn the car around and put out your lights, my lad.”

When I had obeyed, he explained that just as soon as the Yard man and Hiart compared those boots of mine with a plaster cast, they would be pretty sure that I and my companion, if I had one, would try to escape. Any available police would at once be ordered by telephone to keep an eye on the road we were following. The police car itself could stop the other end of the road.

I climbed up the bank to watch. I didn’t have long to wait. Indeed the lights of the cars were already in sight. There were two of them. They stopped outside my darkened house. I could hear the police hammering on the door Then they went round to the back, and the lights were switched on. The cars had left plenty of room on the road I tore past them, with the needle of the speedometer jumping from twenty to sixty. I was keeping my eyes on the road. Sandorski said that everyone was in the house or at the back, and that the only people to see us were the drivers of the police cars.

I reckoned that one of the drivers would run into the house, that somebody would then jump for the telephone and discover that the wires were cut, and that only then would one of the cars turn and give chase.

That gave me a start of at least one minute and probably three and I felt reasonably sure of holding it even against the brilliant driving of the police. I went along that road to my office, by car or bicycle, six days of the week, and I knew every twist and narrowing. I decided to stick to it, and not to jam myself in the lanes. A cross-country route might trick the pursuit for an hour or two, but in the end would only give them time to draw the cordon tighter round the district where we must be.

I did the seven miles to the outskirts of Dorchester in eight minutes, and please God I never have to do such a piece of driving again! Sandorski reported nothing in sight behind. At the bottom of the town was a fork, and there I turned sharp left, going back more or less parallel to the road I had come on, and separated from it by flat water meadows.

There I drove sedately like any family farmer returning home. I saw the lights of a fast car hurling along the road we had just left, and gambled that the police would also see my lights, and decide that it couldn’t be me. That was what happened. Sandorski reported that the police car had rushed straight on up the hill into Dorchester. There they were bound, as they thought, to have news of me. I must have been seen or stopped.

Now we sailed away northwards over the downs, passing little traffic and, thank heaven, no village bobby to notice our number. Not that he need bother with numbers. My car was a smart light gray, and horribly conspicuous at night.

When I thought we were likely to have passed out of the probable area of search, I turned into a lane and stopped. Far beyond us, of course, there would be check points or roving patrol cars to cut us off from London, but we were now between the lines with time to think.

I told Lex to come up and take a breather. He put out an unhappy and disgusting head.

“I vos ill,” he said.

“All for the cause!” exclaimed Sandorski. “Heil Hitler!”

“Why you say that?” asked Lex very seriously.

“Ask our friend here, my lad!” Sandorski said with an air of triumphant mystery.

“He is then alive?”

“Go and wash your face,” I said. “I can hear a stream down there to the right somewhere.”

I had grabbed a bottle of rum as last-minute baggage, and when Lex had gone we had a couple.

“One thing I didn’t have time to tell you,” the general remarked. “Mustn’t use our names before this chap.”

“I haven’t, I think. Nor you–except that you will call me ‘colonel.’ But that’s all right, as nobody else does.”

“We’ll make it,” he said.

“We’ll want a lot of luck. Do you realize I’ve got to stop for petrol somewhere?”

“And I’ve got to telephone.”

“What on earth for?”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

“You told me to get out of the house and bring a needle and thread.”

“That’s to sew up Lex’s briefcase,” he explained. “Must be in decent condition when he delivers it to Heyne-Hassingham.”

“Lord! Can you arrange that?”

“Yes, of course. And room wired for sound. If I ask for a chance to prove my innocence I’ll get it. Enough influence for that, ha? But nobody’s going to know me if I get arrested. Why should they? Might be guilty. I’m not trusted. I’m just a source of information.”

It was a wild scheme, but I could see that if we could deliver Lex to that flat at 26 Fulham Park Avenue it might succeed. It seemed to me, however, that our chance of ever reaching London was slim. In the course of the night the movements of my gray car were certain to be reported by some policeman. On the other hand, to judge by the newspapers, England was full of criminals regularly escaping with stolen cars. I suppose that they were prepared for the game, chose neutral body work, and had handy false number plates such as Hiart himself used.

The telephoning had to be tackled as soon as possible before the description of me and my car had been circulated too widely. It was improbable, we thought, that the police had any description of Sandorski or even his name. Hiart wouldn’t tell them, for he couldn’t be sure that Sandorski was in England at all, and he was not likely to commit himself when he didn’t know what questions he would have to meet. Though he held a possible winning hand, he must be just as alarmed as we were. It was a comforting thought. About the only one available.

Lex came back from the stream, pale and dirty, but looking slightly more like a traveling lawyer than a criminal. I drove on, steering a slow and uncertain course through the byroads. I was trying to find a safe route round Salisbury, well to the north of it.

We crossed the main road to London between Sherborne and Shaftesbury, using quite unnecessary caution. Half a mile further on, running through Hinton FitzPaine, we saw a telephone kiosk just clear of the last houses. It seemed to be as remote as any, so I drove up a stony little lane, where there was certain to be no traffic at that time of night and where we could safely wait while Sandorski went into the village.

I could not go with him. Lex was the difficulty. We couldn’t very well walk off with the brown paper parcel for which he was responsible. On the other hand, we didn’t want to leave him alone with it. So I had to stay.

“Have you got enough small change?” I yelled after the general.