"Fortunately, there ain't any police traps 'ere. We aren't like they
are in Surrey. I got fined a fiver at Guildford a month ago, an' I was
only goin' fourteen miles an 'our. But it ain't any good defendin'.
The police are always in the right," he added, with a sigh.
"Do you think that we shall overtake them?" I inquired anxiously, for
at all hazards I wanted to see and speak again with Ella. What she had
told me excited my curiosity and aroused my determination that she
should make no further self-sacrifice.
"It all depends," was his vague answer. "They've got a `forty,' you
know, an' can do these hills much better than we can. But they may get
a puncture or a tyre-burst."
"But as to speed. They won't go quicker than we are travelling?" I
inquired.
"Not if they don't want to get 'ad up," he grinned, and I then
recognised that we were on a wide flat road, travelling at nearly forty
miles an hour, and raising a perfect wall of dust behind us. "There's
one or two level-crossings, too, that may delay 'em."
"And us also, eh?"
"Perhaps," he said. "But what I'm going to do is to go at a greater
speed than they've gone. We've got nearly an hour and a half to make
up, by some means or other."
And lowering his head he set his shoulders in his seat and still
increased the speed until we flew at a pace such as I had never before
travelled in any motor-car. The engines ticked away with rhythmical
music, the machinery hummed with that even tone which tells the
practised motorist that his cylinders are working properly, and without
once pulling up, we soon found ourselves slowing down to enter the quiet
old county town of Dorchester.
At Charminster, where the two high-roads parted, we had news of the blue
car we were following. A man breaking stones at the roadside informed
us that it had passed about half an hour in front of us.
"It was going at a terrible speed," he added, in broad Dorset dialect.
"They'll get summoned--you see."
This caused us to put on more pace, heedless of whether any pair of
constables--or hedgehogs as motorists call them--were lurking near the
road. Gibbs put on all the speed he could get out of his engines, and
we literally flew through Stratton and Frampton. He was, it seemed,
determined to earn the couple of sovereigns I had promised him as reward
if successful.
The afternoon went slowly by. The sky became overcast, and there was a
slight shower, but we did not pull up, tearing ever onward through
Chard, over the Devonshire border and round the big hill of Dumpdon to
old-fashioned but unpicturesque Honiton.
We had now only seventeen miles or so before reaching Exeter. Slowly we
descended the main street which dropped very steeply to a bridge over a
small stream, and then out again upon the broad white undulating road,
fringed almost continuously by trees and whitewashed and thatched
cottages--the main road that runs from London through Hounslow to the
west.
Suddenly we dipped beneath a railway bridge, and the road rising again
our eager eyes saw about a mile in front of us a travelling cloud of
dust. As we looked the car before us went round a slight bend in the
flat open road, and there showed a flash of bright blue.
"Look!" cried Gibbs excitedly, "that's the car! We must overtake them,"
and setting his teeth again he put on all speed possible.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, we seemed to be overtaking my fugitive
love who was, of course, all unconscious of being followed, when, just
as we ran over the bridge which crosses the Clyst, there was a loud
report like a pistol shot, and Gibbs was compelled to instantly apply
the brake, uttering a loud exclamation of disappointment and chagrin.
Our off rear tyre had burst!
My love would be in Exeter and beyond reach long before we could put on
a new tube and tyre.
I stood watching the fast receding car, my heart sinking within me.
Ella was before my very eyes, escaping me--never to return.
I knew that the intention was to evade me in future. And yet how madly
I loved her. No matter what she said or what she did, she was still
mine--mine!