ewart to the Chief Constable. Describe
the two men, and say you suspect them of having had something to do
with the London murder. You can invent reasons. The two will come
back, never fear. Not tonight, for they'll follow me forty miles along
the road, but first thing tomorrow morning. Tell the police to be here
bright and early.'

He set off like a docile child, while I worked at Scudder's notes.
When he came back we dined together, and in common decency I had to let
him pump me. I gave him a lot of stuff about lion hunts and the
Matabele War, thinking all the while what tame businesses these were
compared to this I was now engaged in! When he went to bed I sat up
and finished Scudder. I smoked in a chair till daylight, for I could
not sleep.

About eight next morning I witnessed the arrival of two constables and
a sergeant. They put their car in a coach-house under the innkeeper's
instructions, and entered the house. Twenty minutes later I saw from
my window a second car come across the plateau from the opposite
direction. It did not come up to the inn, but stopped two hundred
yards off in the shelter of a patch of wood. I noticed that its
occupants carefully reversed it before leaving it. A minute or two
later I heard their steps on the gravel outside the window.

My plan had been to lie hid in my bedroom, and see what happened. I
had a notion that, if I could bring the police and my other more
dangerous pursuers together, something might work out of it to my
advantage. But now I had a better idea. I scribbled a line of thanks
to my host, opened the window, and dropped quietly into a gooseberry
bush. Unobserved I crossed the dyke, crawled down the side of a
tributary burn, and won the highroad on the far side of the patch of
trees. There stood the car, very spick and span in the morning
sunlight, but with the dust on her which told of a long journey. I
started her, jumped into the chauffeur's seat, and stole gently out on
to the plateau.

Almost at once the road dipped so that I lost sight of the inn, but the
wind seemed to bring me the sound of angry voices.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Adventure of the Radical Candidate

You may picture me driving that 40 h.p. car for all she was worth over
the crisp moor roads on that shining May morning; glancing back at
first over my shoulder, and looking anxiously to the next turning; then
driving with a vague eye, just wide enough awake to keep on the