VI

We did not talk. Sir George watched the door to the inner room and

sneezed frequently. Part of the time he examined his revolver, which he

put on the keg in front of him. He was very clumsy with it; I suppose a

Prime Minister has an armour-bearer usually, or something of that sort.

Once we heard an automobile far off, and Sir George ran out to the

gates and closed them. But the machine went past, and from the voices it

seemed to be filled with men. I saw it again later.

While Sir George was outside in the rain I emptied his revolver. It is

one thing to have a man arrested for stealing one's jewels, and quite a

different one to murder him in cold blood. I had the cartridges in my

hand when Sir George opened the door, and in my excitement I threw them

into the fire. From that moment until we left I stood behind one of the

packing-cases and waited for the hearth to open fire on us. But for some

reason the cartridges did not explode. Perhaps they fell too far back in

the chimney.

(I. E. This would make a good plot for a detective story. Some time I

shall try it. Writing is much easier than I had thought it would be,

especially conversation. The villain could put a row of shells on a

fire-log, pointing toward the hero's easy-chair. The hero comes home and

lights the fire, and then the heroine, whom the villain loves, comes on

some agonised errand to the hero's room at night, sits in his chair and

is murdered. Of course, the hero is suspected, or perhaps the villain

jumps from behind a curtain to save the lady, kneels on the hearthrug

and gets a broadside that finishes him. You can see the possibilities.)

Sir George was growing distinctly less agreeable. He made another

appeal to the prisoner to give up the necklace and put it out under the

door, but the prisoner did not make any reply.

At three o'clock Bagsby came. We hurried out to the little porch and

watched him stop the car just beside us, with its nose at the gates. As

he was getting out, muttering, to open them, Sir George caught him by

the shoulder and held the revolver under his nose.

"Get back into the car," he commanded, "and take this young woman and

myself to Newbury. And mind you do it. No nonsense. Do you know the

road?"

Bagsby muttered sullenly that he did, and then, just when I was safely

in the tonneau and had drawn a long breath, Sir George stopped with his

foot on the step and--I think he swore. Then he put the revolver in my

hand and pointed it at Bagsby's neck.

"Do you know how to shoot?" he demanded.

"Ye--yes."

"I have forgotten my mackintosh," he explained curtly. "Shoot him if he

attempts to start the car." He turned in the doorway to say: "Don't take

your finger off the trigger." I might just as well have been pointing

the automobile wrench, for there was nothing in the revolver.

Then he went into the cottage, and was gone fully a minute. But the

strange thing was that as he went into the house a lightning flash lit

up his figure, and he had his mackintosh over his arm! However, he might

have meant his goloshes, which is English for overshoes and sounds like

mackintosh. (I know at home I always confuse Wabash and Oshkosh.) While

he was in the house the second strange thing happened. Bagsby squirmed

in his seat in front of me and said in a muffled voice: "Be easy with

that trigger, Miss!"

It was not Bagsby at all! _It was the prisoner we had locked in the

inner room!_

"Oh!" I said limply, and the revolver slid out of my lap. He turned

cautiously and bent over the back of the driver's seat.

"Everything's all right," he said quickly. "You are perfectly safe; I am

going to take you home. Unload that revolver, won't you, before he gets

back? Or let me do it."

"It is unloaded," I quavered. "I did it myself. But why----?"

"Sh! Hold out your hand."

I did, slowly, and I felt my necklace drop into it. He caught my fingers

and held them.

"Now, will you trust me?" he whispered. We could hear Sir George falling

over boxes in the house and talking to himself. "I have been fair with

_you_, haven't I?"

"I--yes!" I couldn't say less, could I, with the pearls in my hand?

"I--I suppose I can trust you. I only want to go home and have a cup of

weak tea and go to bed."

"Good girl!" he said. "Of course you can trust me." And leaning over,

without any warning, he kissed my palm, while the necklace slid to the

floor of the tonneau beside the revolver. It was all most amazing. "Not

a word to Sir George, please. He is upset enough as it is. It is my turn

to trust you."

"But I don't understand," I was beginning, when Sir George came to the

door of the cottage. At that moment one of the cartridges in the fire

exploded, and without looking back he leaped off the porch and into the

car. I had only time to pick up the revolver and to point its harmless

barrel at the chauffeur's back. I have no doubt that to this minute Sir

George thinks that a desperate attempt was made that night on his life.

For reasons that I am coming to, I never explained. I am very vague

about the next thirty minutes. We passed a man, I recall, some distance

down the lane, a man who turned and yelled at us through the storm, and

I rather thought that it was Bagsby. I couldn't be quite certain. And

after we had gone perhaps a mile we met the automobile we had heard

earlier coming back through the mud. We made a détour which almost

ditched us, and passed them without slackening speed.

The pace was terrific. Sir George and I rattled about in the tonneau,

now jammed together at one side and now at another. I was much too busy

trying to stay in the car to have time to wonder what it all meant. But

I found out soon enough.

The other car had turned and was following us! It was coming very fast,

too; and they had taken off the muffler, which made it even more

alarming. When Sir George saw that we were being pursued he became

frantic. After threatening the supposed Bagsby he began to offer bribes.

For, of course, one could understand that the position was an

ignominious one for any Prime Minister, and that his dignity would be

sure to suffer if we were overtaken and the story came out. How many

times at home I have sat in a theatre and seen cinematograph pictures of

people in a motor being followed at top speed, with perhaps an angry

father shaking his fist from the pursuing car. But never had I expected

to be playing castanets with the Premier of Great Britain in the tonneau

of a machine driven by a highwayman, and flying from unknown pursuers

who were chasing us for Heaven knows what reason. Even at the time I

remember thinking what a cinematograph picture we would make.

Up to this point the story has been mild enough. Now it becomes tragic.

For at the place where the car should have kept straight on to go to

Newbury it turned suddenly, putting me in Sir George's lap for a moment,

and jounced along over mud and ruts, through a narrow lane. Sir George

threw me off ungallantly and yelled. Then he leaned over and held the

revolver against the driver's neck.

"What do you mean?" he almost shrieked. "Where are you going, sir? This

is not the road to Newbury!" But the car kept on. Sir George was

frantic. He demanded that the car be stopped, so he could get out and

hide in the hedge. He snapped the trigger, regardless of the fact that

had it been loaded we would have gone crashing into eternity and a tree

at forty miles an hour.

Then he commanded our chauffeur to turn around and ram the pursuing car

to destruction, although he put it differently. And then, finding he

made no impression on the hooded and goggled figure in the driver's

seat, he stood up frantically and poised the revolver to brain the man

at the wheel.

He was quite mad. It was not courage on my part that made me leap and

catch his arm. It was sheer self-preservation. The revolver hurtled into

the road. (I cannot find the dictionary, but I'm sure "hurtled" is

correct, and certainly it is forceful.) The revolver hurtled into the

road, and Sir George collapsed, with me on top of him. Afterwards, of

course, I had chills, because, being the Prime Minister, no doubt he

could have me put in the Tower or beheaded, or something dreadful. And

would it be "lèse-majesté" to knock over the King's representative?

By this time we were well up the lane, and the other car shot past along

the highroad. But our pace did not moderate, and after a little the

other car found its mistake and came back. We could hear it a quarter of

a mile or so behind us. And at that precise instant we began to slow up:

the engine struggled for a few yards, began to pant, gave two or three

exhausted gasps, and then turned over on its side and died. The next

moment we were all three in the road and running like mad up a hill.

If one knows _where_ one is going, and whom one is with, and who is

behind one shouting "Stop thief!" it is not so bad. But to have a man

you don't know take you by the arm and drag you along through briers and

mud toward Heaven knows where, with half a dozen other men just below

climbing faster than you can run, and it is raining, and you haven't an

idea what it is all about--well, it is not pleasant. And I had lost a

heel off one slipper and was three inches shorter on one side than on

the other.

Sir George was for refusing the hill and for dodging among the trees,

but our deliverer (?) held him tight. Once, in a frenzy of alarm, he

did break loose, but he was promptly captured and brought back, with

apologies, but firmness. It was easy to see why. He would have caught

his death of cold if he had wandered over those hills all night in the

rain, and what would have become of England? (I am very glad there are

no Prime Ministers in America, and most of the Presidents that I recall

would be as easy to run away with as a bull hippopotamus.)

And then we found ourselves at a side entry of what seemed to be a

colossal house. The door was partly open and a man in livery was asleep

on a bench just inside the door.

The hold on my arm was released. The Prime Minister, assisted by The

Unknown, went up the steps and in through the door.

I struggled up alone, with my lungs suddenly collapsed and yells from

somewhere behind me in the darkness. I could hardly lift my feet, and

yet I knew I must get up the steps and through that open door before

somebody reached out from the black behind me and clutched me. It was a

nightmare come to life. And then the footman caught my outstretched hand

and dragged me in, the door slammed, and I sat down very quietly on the

hall bench and fainted away.

(One of the people in this story insists that I was _not_ left to drag

myself up the steps alone, and that he took me up and put me on the

bench. But he was excited, and I should know what really happened. He

never even glanced at me.)