A SMASH UP.
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.