“Then his car is up one of these two tracks,” said Pink.

“Oh, nonsense!” Hiart exclaimed, his voice leaping to an offensive falsetto on the first syllable. “You haven’t heard a car, Bear, have you? No! Well, if he knew he was followed by you, he’d have driven off very fast. And if he didn’t know he was followed, he’d have driven off normally. The car isn’t here at all. Flash your light on that mud, and see!”

It was no wonder that Hiart was disliked. And he was ten times more exasperating because he was always right.

“Taine is probably behind the hedge,” Pink said, “with a gun trained on you.”

Hiart jumped to the other side of the car.

“I find those remarks in poor taste, Pink,” he complained.

Fortunately Pink didn’t test his theory, for I was behind the hedge.

Hiart turned to Bear.

“What was he doing in the pub?”

“Having a drink of course,” Pink interrupted impatiently. “Why not?”

“Nonsense! Nonsense! That’s a risk Sandorski would never have allowed.”

“You’ve got Sandorski on the brain,” Pink answered. “Taine burned up Lex, and therefore he shot Riemann, and we don’t know who put him up to it because you didn’t stop to see. And I rather think Riemann is alive–unless you shot him yourself and know he isn’t.”

“Deplorable!” Hiart protested.

There was a certain smug satisfaction in his voice.

He evidently liked to be accused of daring deeds.

“Bear, since you have been here, have you heard a car leave the village?”

“No, sir.”

‘Then they are still here, and somewhere on the other side of the houses.”

They all got into the car and drove down into the village. I ran after them as close as I dared. They stopped at the pub and went inside–no doubt to find the surveyor and confirm my identity.

In that one street, it was difficult to pass the car and its driver. All I could do was to enter the inn yard, go round behind the building and come out again into the open with my back to the car. I walked unsteadily and gave a loud belch of satisfaction as if I were bound homewards from the side door. As soon as I had passed out of the range of one village light, I ran for my car.

Sandorski’s mood had changed. He was still on edge– but merely because he couldn’t think what had happened to me. Otherwise he was purring with pleasure. He had at last got hold of his friend Roland, who had promised to prepare the flat at 26 Fulham Park Avenue forthwith. Roland as yet had heard nothing of our adventures, but had warned the general, on principle, not to wreck all chances of help by getting himself and Lex arrested.

In the silence of the night I heard Hiart’s car pull away from the village pub. If I reversed down the lane I should arrive at the corner about the same time as they did. If I stayed where I was, I feared they would have a look at the tempting mouth of the lane and walk far enough up it to find us. The worn and stony surface might or might not reveal the fresh track of tires, but I had an exaggerated respect for Hiart’s hunting instinct; he would spot that lane as just the place to leave a car if you didn’t want it to be seen while you went down to the village.

So there was nothing for it but to go on up the hill, and pray that we didn’t find ourselves in a cul-de-sac. As we went I tried to tell Sandorski–without very much success– what had happened. For Lex’s benefit I called our pursuers the deviationists. At any rate I made it clear that they were not the police.

The lane was so narrow that I could drive without lights. The hedges on each side brushed the wings, and loose stones crackled and spurted under the wheels. The gradient at the worst places must have been one in four. The noise of our progress in bottom gear attracted Hiart and Pink. Sandorski reported lights behind us.

At the top was a stout five-barred gate. The general jumped out and opened it.

“Give me a rendezvous, quick!” he demanded.

“Can’t. I don’t know where we are.”

“Damn! Wanted to puncture their tires when they stopped. Pity–ha?”

It was a pity. But we might never have met again, and I didn’t know what the plan was if ever we reached London. We went on. The lane ended and we bumped over some sort of grass track. I had to use my lights. They revealed nothing but more grass and ruts.

This was not the sort of situation that suited Sandorski, for we dared not show fight. By one of his favorite rearguard actions we had everything to lose. If Lex were caught and his papers recovered, nothing could save us from the dock–though, I suppose, after months of agony for me and my family, we might have been acquitted. Still better for Hiart and Heyne-Hassingham was our death. That would be the end of any evidence of what had really happened at my shoot, and Hiart–if he arranged things to prove self-defense and could put his fingers in his ears at the critical moment–would be thanked by the police for his gallant chase.

I came to a cow-trampled mud hole where the ruts petered out. Beyond the hole were two roughly stopped gaps. Both led to cultivated fields. This looked uncommonly like the end. I turned off my lights and got out of the car, waiting to recover my night sight. It was the usual dirty, damp November night. We might have been on some exotic plateau of Rockies or Andes instead of a hill in populous England four hundred feet above the sea. There wasn’t a signal from humanity, except the faint smell of wood smoke drifting up from the village on the southwest wind.

The car behind us had stopped to go through the gate. I heard it shut again behind them. I let them drive on towards me, for the ruts leading into blackness would take their attention away from anything that might be happening in the outer dark. Then I turned my car to face the open grass and shot off into the night like a plane taking off. It sounds dangerous, and it was. On the other hand one somehow knows, in a countryside that forms part of one’s blood, what the sweep of the land is likely to be. I merely mean that I knew I should meet an obstruction before I went over the edge of anything, and that the obstruction would be soft. I also felt sure that I wasn’t going to meet anything at all immediately. That may have been due to the feel of the grass or the wind, or, less mysteriously, to rum. One in the car and three more, unwanted, on an empty stomach undoubtedly made my driving optimistic.

We had the devil’s own luck. I missed a pond by inches, and then went slap through a barbed-wire fence into a field of kale. It couldn’t have been better The kale was high enough and formed a dark enough mass for me to begin to brake in time. When we hit it, we merely crashed for a few yards through the soft stalks.

On the damp plowland it took time to reverse and turn. Lex and Sandorski jumped out to push. I doubt if they made much difference, but I wouldn’t like to underrate the sheer nervous will-power of Sandorski in a crisis. What really saved us were the fibrous stumps of the kale, which gave just enough purchase for the back wheels.

When I had pulled out, and back through the gap in the fence, I stopped for the two to get in. Meanwhile Hiart and Pink had followed up the ruts to the mud hole. There they picked up our tracks in their lights, and came nosing along them. They were now something less than three hundred yards away. They couldn’t see us, for the bushes at the edge of the pond I had just missed were partly in the way, and the background and skyline were broken; but undoubtedly they would pick us out as soon as we moved. Sandorski told Lex to lie on the floor, and folded himself into a small tense spring between the dashboard and the front seat.

I started rolling gently over the field towards the lane. The movement, as I feared, attracted attention, and the two great eyes of the following car swiveled round until they were full on my side. They rested there a couple of seconds as Hiart’s driver swung round in a quarter circle to keep me in view. Then he quickly turned the full semicircle, and lit up the rolling field ahead.