'In the wood this side of Gertrud's cottage ... on the left hand. I
left him running among the trees.' I put all the terror I knew into my
pipe, and it wasn't all acting.

'He means the Henrichs' cottage, Herr Colonel,' said the chauffeur.
'This man is courting the daughter.'

Stumm gave an order and the great car backed, and, as I looked round, I
saw it turning. Then as it gathered speed it shot forward, and
presently was lost in the shadows. I had got over the first hurdle.

But there was no time to be lost. Stumm would meet the postman and
would be tearing after me any minute. I took the first turning, and
bucketed along a narrow woodland road. The hard ground would show very
few tracks, I thought, and I hoped the pursuit would think I had gone
on to Schwandorf. But it wouldn't do to risk it, and I was determined
very soon to get the car off the road, leave it, and take to the
forest. I took out my watch and calculated I could give myself ten
minutes.

I was very nearly caught. Presently I came on a bit of rough heath,
with a slope away from the road and here and there a patch of black
which I took to be a sandpit. Opposite one of these I slewed the car
to the edge, got out, started it again and saw it pitch head-foremost
into the darkness. There was a splash of water and then silence.
Craning over I could see nothing but murk, and the marks at the lip
where the wheels had passed. They would find my tracks in daylight but
scarcely at this time of night.

Then I ran across the road to the forest. I was only just in time, for
the echoes of the splash had hardly died away when I heard the sound of
another car. I lay flat in a hollow below a tangle of snow-laden
brambles and looked between the pine-trees at the moonlit road. It was
Stumm's car again and to my consternation it stopped just a little
short of the sandpit.

I saw an electric torch flashed, and Stumm himself got out and examined
the tracks on the highway. Thank God, they would be still there for
him to find, but had he tried half a dozen yards on he would have seen
them turn towards the sandpit. If that had happened he would have
beaten the adjacent woods and most certainly found me. There was a
third man in the car, with my hat and coat on him. That poor devil of
a postman had paid dear for his vanity.

They took a long time before they started again, and I was jolly well
relieved when they went scouring down the road. I ran