to me to go straight on, and, ducking down inside the
landaulette, he hid himself as completely from sight as though he had
been in the tool-box. For my part, remembering the old adage about "In
for a penny in for a pound," I just let the Daimler fly, and we went
down the drive and up to the lodge as fast as car ever travelled that
particular road or will travel it whatever the circumstances.

"Gate," I roared, "gate, gate!" for the padlock was plain enough and a
good stout chain about it. No one answered me for more than five
minutes, I suppose, and no sooner did an old man appear, than I saw the
stranger with his bushy black beard, his lordship's double, running
down the drive for all he was worth, and bawling to the gate-keeper not
to open.

A critical moment this, upon my word, and one to bring a man's heart
into his mouth--the doddering old man tottering to the gate; the
stranger running like a prize-winner; Lord Crossborough himself,
doubled up in the bottom of the landaulette, and me sitting there with
my foot on the clutch, my hand on the throttle, and my pulse going like
one o'clock. Should we do it or should we not? Would it be shut or
open? The question answered itself a moment later, when the
lodge-keeper, not seeing the other fellow, half opened the iron gates
and let my bonnet in between them. The car almost knocked him down as
we raced through--I could hear him bawling "Stop!" even above the hum
of the engine.

You will not have forgotten that his lordship had told me to go, hell
for leather, directly I was through the gate, and right well I obeyed
him. The lanes were narrow and twisty; there were morning mists
blowing up from the fields; we passed more than one market cart, and
nearly lost our wings. But I was out to earn fifteen of the best, and
right well I worked for them. Slap bang into Potter's Bar, slap bang
out of it and round the bend towards Prickly Hill. I couldn't have
driven faster if I had had the whole county police at my heels--and the
Lord knows whether I had or not.

This brought us to Barnet in next to no time. We were still doing
forty as we entered the town, and would have run out of it at
twenty-five after we'd passed the church and the police station--would
have, I say, but for one little fact, and that was a fat sergeant of
police right in the middle of the road, with his hand held up like a
leg of mutton, and a voice that might have been hailing a burglar.

"Here