the powder burned my face
as the touch of red-hot iron. But a second shot he never fired. A
sudden lurch, as I let go the wheel, sent the car bounding on to the
grass at the road-side, threw the murderer off his balance and hurled
him backwards. There was a tremendous crash, I found myself beneath
the tonneau, and then, as it seemed, on the top of it again. At last I
went rolling over and over on to the grass, and lay there, God knows
how long, in very awe and terror of all that had overtaken me.

But the valet himself was stone dead, caught by the neck as the car
went over and crushed almost beyond recognition. And that was the
judgment upon him, as I shall believe to my life's end.

* * * * *

They never caught old "Benny," not for that job, at any rate. He
turned out to be the head of a swindling crew, known in America and
Paris as the "Red Poll" gang, because of his beautiful sandy hair. He
must have been wanted for fifty jobs in Europe, and as many on the
other side. As for his supposed son, Mr. Walter, and the valet
Marchant, they were but two of the company. And why they came to
engage me was because of a motor accident to the man Walter, which put
him out of the running when the burglary job at Lord Hailsham's was to
be undertaken.

Kennaway, the detective, was three months in hospital after his little
lot. It was clever of him to make me post a telegram on the road, for,
directly he got it, he wired to the Chief Constable at Cambridge, and
came on himself by train. The local police furnished a list of all the
house-parties being held about Royston that week-end, and, of course,
as Lord Hailsham was celebrating his silver wedding, it didn't need
much wit to send Kennaway there; the valet, meanwhile, being already in
the house, disguised as a maid.

We were to have had a bit of a silver wedding ourselves, it appears,
for I doubt not "Benny" would have led all the silver, to say nothing
of the gold and precious stones, to the altar as soon as possible. But
the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley, as do motor-cars
when the man who's driving them has a pistol at his head.

III

IN ACCOUNT WITH DOLLY ST. JOHN

My old father used to say that "woman's looks were his only books and
folly was all they taught him," which shows, I suppose, that what he
knew about the sex he learned from a circulating library.

Anyway, he never drove a motor-car, or he wou