Flora's handling of the old Panhard was beyond praise. Accurate, well judged and with just enough dash of risk at cross roads or in traffic to steal an extra mile or two on the average speed per hour. The night had chilled and Anthony Barraclough, wrapped in his mother's cloak watched the girl beside him with a queer mixture of admiration and impatience. Admiration for her faultless nerve and impatience that the car for all its ancient virtue in no sense could be termed a speed-monger. Flora's attitude amused him too, it was so tremendously intense, so devoted to duty and withal so exactingly efficient. There is no particular reason why it should be so, but it always tickles the male sense of humour to watch a woman do a man's job as capably as a man himself could do it. Her conduct when they punctured on the long stretch between Wimbourne and Ringwood had been exemplary. She jacked up, changed wheels and was away again in the shortest possible time. True a little over a quarter of an hour was lost, but the locking ring had rusted in its thread, as sometimes happens, and it was heavy work for a girl to shift it unaided. She had forbidden Barraclough to help and had made him picket a hundred yards down the road in case the pursuers should come up unexpectedly.

After that all had gone well—except for a plug sooting on number three cylinder and a halt for petrol about fifty miles outside London. A full moon had risen with sundown which lit the countryside brightly, and made the run almost as easy as by day.

Only once did Barraclough see the pursuing Ford, two spots of light visible from the top of the rise threading through the valley five miles to the rear. Of course, it might have been any other car, but a kind of second sense convinced him that this was not the case. He did not confide to Flora what he had seen, but the tapping of his foot on the floor-board gave her the information as surely as any spoken word.

She startled him not a little by rapping out the enquiry:

"How much lead have we got."

"Five miles."

"We shall do it. They won't average more than twenty-eight and we're good for that. Where are we now?"

"Hogs-back."

"What's time?"

"'Bout ten to eleven."

"Hm! Think they'll shove any obstacles in the way?"

"Depends," said Anthony. "If they sent a message through it's pretty certain we may run into a hold up."

"Going to chance it?"

"No. We'll slip off the main road at Cobham and trickle in through the byes."

"Right oh! tell me when."

For some miles they drove in silence and once again between Ripley and Guildford had a glimpse of the following lights. With a considerable shock Barraclough realised that the distance separating the two cars had greatly diminished. But hereabouts an unexpected piece of luck favoured them. At a point where the road narrowed between hedges a farm gate was thrown open and a flock of sheep was driven out into the highway. Flora contrived to dash past before the leaders of the flock came through the gate. Another second and she would have been too late. Glancing back Anthony observed that the entire road was solid with sheep, a compact mass that moved neither forward nor backward.

"Our friends'll lose five minutes penetrating that," he announced gleefully.

It did not occur to him until later that every one of those woolly ewes was an unknowing servant of Hugo van Diest and that their presence in the road was the direct result of a wire dispatched to a quiet little man named Phillips who had been given the task of making the way into London difficult. Mr. Phillips had not had very much time, but he had done his best. A series of telegraph poles had been cut down outside Staines, Slough, and at various points along the Portsmouth road. A huge furniture van with its wheels off obstructed the narrows at Brentford, and in one or two places wires had been drawn across the King's highway.

It was the side turning at Cobham saved them running into one of these obstacles by a narrow margin of scarcely a hundred yards. Also it was the side turning, bumpy narrow and twisted that proved their undoing.

An upward climb, a perilously fast descent, a corner taken a trifle too fine, a sharp flint, a burst front tyre, and at a point where two roads crossed the veteran car almost somersaulted into a ditch, wrecked beyond hope of repair. They were doing forty when it happened and it was a miracle they escaped with their lives.

Flora was first to scramble over the tilted side and survey the ruins of their hopes. Anthony still wrapped in his mother's cloak followed and shook his head over the extent of the damage.

"You hurt?" he asked.

"No. Are you?"

"I'm all right. What happened?"

"Front tyre. Wheel fairly kicked out of my hand."

"It's damn bad luck," said Anthony.

"Brutal." She bent over and switched off her lights. "What are we going to do?"

He looked at a sign-post, knocked crooked by the car when it plunged off the metal into the ditch.

"This road leads from Oxshott—London that way. With any luck we might get a lift."

"Late for anything to be about." She looked back along the way they had come. The road could be seen threading its way among pines for a couple of miles or more. "We shall know they're coming five minutes before they can get here. Still I suppose you won't wait for them."

"No fear. Couldn't put up much of a fight with this hand."

"Pigs," said Flora. "I'd like to kill them."

"Both sides are pretty lethal. Wouldn't fancy my chances if——"

"You think they'd——"

"Course they would. Why in blazes doesn't something roll up? Bet your life if they can't get the concession for themselves they'll take precious good care no one else shall profit by it." He paced up and down looking this way and that. "It was like my infernal conceit bringing the thing through myself. Anyone but an idiot would have registered it from Cherbourg. Almost wish we'd stuck to the main road. There'd have been some traffic there. Damn all motorists who're in bed tonight."

Very faintly through the thin night air came the throb of an engine.

Flora clutched his arm.

"D'you hear?"

"They're coming."

"That's no Ford," she said. "It's coming from over there." And she pointed toward Oxshott.

"You're right," said Anthony. "Got your gun—give it to me."

"What for?"

"Because that car is going to stop whether it wants to or not."

Flora clapped her hands ecstatically.

"Oh, let me hold 'em up," she pleaded.

"No fear. You've risked enough already. Run round the bend and meet 'em. If they won't pull up for you they will for me."

He took the pistol from Flora and planted himself squarely in the middle of the road.

"Off you go." And she went.

Through the darkness ahead came patterns of light making black lace of the twigs and branches. He heard Flora cry "Stop—stop," and the squawk of a Claxon horn. But still the car came on. It swung round the curve and made directly for him, flooding him in light from the heads.

It wanted some nerve to stand there, but nerve was a quality possessed by Anthony Barraclough. He never moved an inch and in his left hand held the pistol levelled at the approaching car.

"I'll fire," he cried.

He saw the driver snatch at his brakes, the steel studs tore up the surface of the road as the car, a small two-seater, came to a standstill within a foot of where he stood.

Then happened an amazing thing. A woman sprang out and ran toward him crying:

"Anthony—you!"

His eyes were dazzled by the head lights, but his memory for voices was not dulled. He leapt back a clear five feet and presented the pistol full in her face.

"I know you," he said. "You're Auriole Craven. But if you or any of that damn crowd try to stop me——"

"No, no, no," she cried. "I'm with you—not against. What on earth are you doing here?"

"Doing? I'd almost done it. Smashed up in the final sprint. I want a seat in your car. Must get to London tonight."

"To London. No. It wouldn't be safe—it wouldn't be fair."

"Fair! You don't understand—don't realise—there are millions of pounds at stake."

"I don't care if there are hundreds of millions," she retorted. "The car is only a two-seater and slow at that. There are two of us already and——"

He interrupted her impatiently, with an order to chuck out her passenger—minor considerations had no weight with him—everything, everybody must be sacrificed to the need of the moment.

"Minor considerations?" said Auriole bitterly. "You speak as if you'd carried the game alone, as far as it has gone. But it was my passenger—the man you want to chuck out—who made it possible. The man who was tortured while you were free to——"

She did not finish the sentence for even as she spoke Richard Frencham Altar stepped shakily from the car and came toward them. The extraordinary resemblance between the two men wrung a cry of amazement from Flora.

"Barraclough?" said Richard rocking on his heels. "Pretty extraordinary meeting like this on the finishing straight. How goes?"

"Good God, man!" said Anthony. "They put you through it."

"That's all right," said Richard. "Never mind paying a price if you win the game."

"Get back into the car," Auriole pleaded. "You'll be caught again."

But he put her aside.

"Wait a bit—wait a bit. Looks as if my job isn't finished yet.
What's the trouble here?" and he nodded at the wrecked car.

It was Flora who poured out the story of the chase and ultimate smash and at the very moment of explanation the lights of Harrison Smith's Ford flashed for a moment upon the sky line to reappear a second later creeping down the avenue of trees on the hillside.

"Look, look," she cried.

To Anthony Barraclough it was a novel experience to act on another man's orders. In that instant of gathering danger Richard Frencham Altar became captain of the situation. He literally flung Anthony into the car and refused to listen to Auriole's protests.

"We're players of a game, aren't we?" he said, "and we're going to play it to a finish. I think, too, it 'ud do me good to have one clean smack at 'em before I'm through."

He hardly knew how it came about that he and Auriole kissed one another—somehow they found time for that and as the car moved away she leant out to say:

"You dear brave wonderful Sportsman."

Then he and Flora were alone in the road watching the red rear lamp disappear into the night.

"You've got some pluck," said Flora. As she helped him into the cloak that Anthony had thrown aside. "Going to wait and hold 'em up?"

"May as well. That little two seater would never have carried four.
Got a gun by any chance?"

"No, he had mine. Didn't he give it to you?"

"He did not, so that's that. You better make for those trees."

"If you think I'm going to desert," began Flora stoutly.

"You're going to obey orders, my dear. Go on—push off."

There was a quality in his voice that compelled obedience.

"Oh, I hate you," said Flora. "Please, please let me stay."

But he was inexorable.

"They'll be here in a minute. Go!" he ordered.

And to hide her tears of rage and mortification Flora went.

Richard glanced over her shoulder at the oncoming lights.

"Pity about that pistol," he muttered.

On the road at his feet lay a lady's hand-bag with silk cords. It was part of the equipment furnished by Mrs. Barraclough. Richard stooped and picked it up. There was a barrel of tar and a sand heap by the sign board and it struck him that both might by useful. With all the speed he could command he rolled the tar barrel up the road and left it blocking the way. Then he returned to the sand heap and filled the hand-bag very full and tightened the strings. It felt quite business like as he spun it in the air.

The noise of the oncoming Ford was now plainly detectable, but with it was another sound, a sound that caused him to throw up his head and listen. From the Oxshott road it came, the tump—tump—tump of a single cylinder motor cycle engine. He knew that music very well, had heard it a score of times during his three weeks' imprisonment. The particular ring of the exhaust could not be mistaken.

"That's Laurence's bike for a thousand pounds," he exclaimed and quickly pulled the hood of the cloak over his head.

To guess at the relative distances, the motor cycle should arrive half a minute before the car and banking on the chance, Richard sat down on the heap of sand and waited.

It was Laurence right enough—in evening dress, and hatless, just as he had sprung to the pursuit after at last they succeeded in breaking down the door.

He saw the wrecked motor and what was apparently an old woman huddled at the roadside. He pulled up within a couple of yards and shouted at her.

"Hi! you Madam! seen a car with a man and a girl in it go by?"

But he received no answer even when he shouted the question a second time. The old lady seemed painfully deaf and employing the most regrettable language, Oliver Laurence descended from his mount, leant it against the fence and came nearer to yell his inquiry into her ear. He did not have time to recover from his surprise, when the voice of Richard Frencham Altar replied: "Yes, I have." The sand-bag descended on the top of his head directed by a full arm swing. A dazzling procession of stars floated before his eyes as though he were plunged into the very heart of the milky-way—flashed and faded into velvet black insensibility.

From behind heralded by a beam of light and the squawk of a horn, came a crash as the Ford Car hit the tar barrel end on. Its front axle went back ten inches and the rear wheels rose upward. Two shadowy forms, that were groundlings at another time, took wings and flew in a neat parabola over the windscreen, striking the metal surface of the road with a single thud. They made no effort to rise, but lay in awkward sprawling attitudes as though in the midst of violent activity they had fallen asleep.

Richard Frencham Altar stood alone, blinking rather stupidly at the havoc he had wrought. It was such a relief when Flora stole out of the shadow of the trees and came toward him.

"What a shemozzle, isn't it?" he said dazedly. "I think we'd better get out of this, don't you?"

He wheeled the motor cycle into the centre of the road and bade her jump up behind.

Folks who were returning home late that night were astonished to see a hatless man with a white unshaved face tearing through the side streets of the south-west district of London on a motor cycle with a pretty, but very dishevelled maiden clinging on to the Flapper bracket and deliriously shouting apparently for no better reason than joy of speed.

An old gentleman who signed himself "Commonsense" wrote to the papers about it next day and expressed his disgust in no measured terms.