The driver must have been in the telephone box when Sandorski and Bear came out of the pub. He had left it to Mrs. Bear to get hold of her husband. We couldn’t understand why he had been in such an unthinking hurry. The explanation–as we found out afterwards–was that Pink and Hiart were both hurt, Hiart badly, and the driver didn’t want to leave them alone at the mercy of a desperado who might return any minute.

I was hesitant about car stealing and knocking out Bear. Even if we were eventually proved innocent of major crimes, the police couldn’t overlook gangsterism of that sort.

“People’s Union require me to drive!” Sandorski assured me. “And People’s Union pay cash down for hire. Where’s the stealing?”

“You can get away with that?”

“Why not–ha? Shan’t we want good men at the People’s Ministry of Transport? Ruthless men like Bear! Obeying orders without question! Nip up the road with Lex and bundle in when I come abreast of you.”

“How are you going to account for starting out the wrong way?”

“Pick up a parcel!” he snorted. “Chaps who want reasons for everything don’t join the People’s Union.”

Sandorski kept Bear occupied while we sneaked past the garage along the grass verge of the road. Lights came tearing towards us, and I shoved Lex down in the ditch and joined him. A black saloon whistled smoothly past us, and I saw inside it the peaked caps of the police. We hadn’t much time–perhaps five minutes before the cops joined Hiart and Pink at the top of the lane, and anything up to a quarter of an hour before somebody got onto Bear to find out why the car hadn’t arrived. Meanwhile the alarm would go out for my gray car, or, if they found it, for a man or men on foot. Twenty miles to Salisbury. We might just have time to reach the town before the make and number of our limousine reached the patrol cars and the constables on point duty.

When I had experienced a few minutes of Sandorski’s driving, I had no doubt that we should make Salisbury if we didn’t die horribly first. He seemed to forget that the

English rule of the road was the left, or perhaps he was merely holding the middle at all costs. When I protested, he had the ignorance to say that he was a damn sight safer than I was. It was not true. I am a most careful driver. I resented it very strongly.

Salisbury streets were comforting, and not only because at last I could relax. The pubs were just closing. There were people about, people with whom we could mix, among whom we could be lost. We were plain citizens, not outlaws, for the moment; but it would be a short moment.

“Where to?” the general asked.

I directed him out of the center into quiet residential streets. A dark house with a longish drive looked tempting. We ran the car into the drive, turned off the lights and left it. That was a good choice. We could count on all the car parks and streets being searched immediately; but in a private garden we were safe until the owner discovered our car next morning. And if he were out and returned that night, he would probably be content to curse the impudence of unknown persons for parking in his drive.

What to do now? Sandorski was all for stealing a car, but I wouldn’t have it. Hiring was too dangerous, for the police would certainly do the rounds of garages. Hitchhiking? Well, if Sandorski and I had been alone, we might have tried to stop a friendly lorry driver on the outskirts of the town. But Lex was nearly finished–so done that we desperately considered putting him in a hotel and hiding ourselves wherever we could. Lex kept on saying he was sorry but that he wasn’t used to such exertion. Again I found myself liking the man. He might fairly have blamed us for using drugs on him, but he didn’t; he just blamed himself.

“We’re not far from the station,” I said. “Shall we take a chance?”

It was a pretty desperate chance, for Sandorski’s description as well as mine would now be known. I went first, leaving the general and Lex in the shadows behind the parcels office. If I were arrested, there was still hope that they might get through and do our business at 26 Fulham Park Avenue.

There were no police in the booking office or on the platform. Though we could never be sure of it, we were always a few minutes ahead of the pursuit. Organization . takes time and there aren’t enough police. I expect some overworked bobby was already on his way to the station-but with instructions to check up on car parks as he went. The ticket window was open, so there was a train for London due. I had borrowed Lex’s hat, glasses and overcoat, made my height as small as I could, and bought three tickets to London. I hoped that from inside the ticket office I looked the inoffensive citizen I felt, and wholly out of the murderous, car-wrecking character that had been forced on me.

As we crossed the bridge over the lines, a train came in from the west. There was another, apparently just about to start, going to Southampton. This was a gift, and singly and unobtrusively we entered it. That, we reckoned, would waste some more of the Wiltshire Constabulary’s time.

The cross-country train rumbled down to the coast untroubled, its few passengers gay or snoring. We had a compartment to ourselves. Lex, once more wrapped in his overcoat, dozed. Sandorski and I kept a careful lookout as the train stopped at the dim-lit country stations. None showed any curiosity about us. There was nothing we could have done if they had.

We were under no illusions. The police would surely have taken an interest in three tickets to London, booked just at the critical time, and three vaguely seen men, two of whom were of the right build. When they hadn’t found us on the London train, it seemed likely that they would put a routine check on Southampton station. If we weren’t there either, then we must be still in Salisbury. And so Sandorski took another of his cavalry decisions.

When the train stopped about a third of a mile outside Southampton Central, he gave a quick look up and down the line, and ordered us out.

As soon as I had lowered Lex to the ground, I felt that Sandorski had merely multiplied our chances of being caught. But he did nothing by halves. He dived between the wheels and lay flat on the permanent way, and we had to follow him. It was so swift and sensible, provided you could forget–as I could not–the chance of the train starting while one of us was wriggling over the rails.

The train pulled out over our heads, leaving Sandorski sputtering with indignant rage and all the monosyllables that his governess had taught him. He had been a little close to the outflow of the lavatory.

It wasn’t a promising stretch of line. On both sides of it were difficult fences and beyond them wide deserts of waste ground. The only cover was a line of coal trucks in a siding. A mile away were the flood-lit funnels of the liners. I had a lovely daydream of being on board with Cecily and the children. It was a depressing spot, that blank bit of railway.

“You’ve done it this time,” I said. “Easier to make New York than London.”

“We’ll take a boat train. Why not?” he answered cheerfully.

“Because there aren’t any at this time of night.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”–he patted the truck against which we were leaning. “It must go somewhere sometime.”

“But we don’t know where, and Lex would be frozen to death.”

“Then, Colonel, my lad, we’ll stop a train!”

“How?”

“Red light. Or do they use green lights in England? Hell! Drive on the left of the road, don’t you?”

“Suppose there’s an accident?”

“Nonsense! Why should there be? Eh, Lex?”

“Accident to other people, not so?” asked Lex hopefully.

“You’ll be in it too, my boy,” said Sandorski. “Got a bit of red paper, Colonel?”

“Is it Christmas?”

“Infantryman–ha? No hole in the ground–no morale, ha? Where’s that torch of yours?”