as if it
were a human being. "Now, then, show what you're made of! There! Take
your head! Now _go_, you vixen! GO!"

There was a sudden roar, a sudden leap; then the car shot forward as
though all the gales of all the universe were sweeping it on, and
the wild race to the coast began.

Narkom jerked down the blinds, turned on the light, and flung open
the locker, as they pounded on.

"Dip in. Get something that can be made to fit you," he said to
Dollops. "We can't risk any of those fellows identifying you as
the chap who was hanging round the station to-night. Toss me over
that wig--the gray one--in the far corner there. God knows what
we're on the track of, but if it leads to Cleek I'll follow it to
the end of time!" Then, lifting his voice until it sounded above
the motor's roar, "Faster, Lennard, faster!" he called. "Give it
to her! give it to her! We've got to beat that train if it kills us!"

They did beat it. The engine's light was not even in sight when the
bright glare of the moon on the Channel's waters flashed up out of
the darkness before them; nor was the sound of the train's coming
even faintly audible as yet, when, a few minutes later, the limousine
swung down the incline and came to a standstill within a stone's
throw of the entrance to the pier, at whose extreme end the packet
lay, with gangways down and fires up and her huge bulk rising and
falling with the movements of the waves.

"Beat her, you see, sir," said Lennard, chuckling as he got down and
opened the door for the superintendent to alight. "Better not go
any nearer, sir, with the car. There's a chap down there standing
by the gangplank and he seems interested in us from the way he's
watching. Jumped up like a shot and came down the gangplank the
instant he heard us coming. Better do the rest of the journey afoot,
sir, and make a pretence of paying me--as if I was a public taxi.
What'll I do? Stop here until morning?"

"Yes. Put up at a garage; and if I don't return by the first boat,
get back to town. Meantime, cut off somewhere and ring up the Yard.
Tell 'em where I've gone. Now then, Dollops, come on!"

A moment later the limousine had swung off into the darkness and
disappeared, and what might properly have been taken for a couple
of English curates on their way to a Continental holiday moved
down the long pier between the glimmering and inadequate lamps
to the waiting boat. But long before they reached it the figure
at the gangp