ot, and the flies were a horrible nuisance. I stood under the
shadow of the hedge, flapped a petulant handkerchief at the detestably
annoying flies, and stared down the road towards the far, invisible
distances of Hurley. No one was in sight. The whole country was plunged in
the deep slumber of a Sunday afternoon, and I began to feel uncommonly
sleepy myself. I had, after all, only slept for a couple of hours or so
that morning.

I yawned wearily and my thoughts ran to the refrain of "fourteen and a
half miles; fourteen and a half miles to Hurley Junction."

"Oh! well," I said to myself at last. "I suppose it's got to be done," and
I stepped out into the road, and very lazily and wearily began my awful
tramp. The road ran uphill, in a long curve encircling the base of the
hill, and I suppose I took about ten minutes to reach the crest of the
rise. I stayed there a moment to wipe my forehead and slap peevishly at my
accompanying swarm of flies. And it was from there I discovered that I had
stumbled upon another property of the Jervaise comedy. Their car--I
instantly concluded that it was their car--stood just beyond the rise,
drawn in on to the grass at the side of the road, and partly covered with
a tarpaulin--it looked, I thought, like a dissipated roysterer asleep in
the ditch.

I decided, then, without the least compunction, that this should be my
heaven-sent means of reaching the railway. The Jervaises owed me that; and
I could leave the car at some hotel at Hurley and send the Jervaises a
telegram. I began to compose that telegram in my mind as I threw off the
tarpaulin preparatory to starting the car. But Providence was only
laughing at me. The car was there and the tank was full of petrol, but
neither the electric starter nor the crank that I found under the seat
would produce anything but the most depressing and uninspired clanking
from the mechanism that should have responded with the warm, encouraging
thud of renewed life.

I swore bitterly (I can drive, but I'm no expert), climbed into the
tonneau, pulled back the tarpaulin over me like a tent to exclude those
pestilent flies, and settled myself down to draw one or two deep and
penetrating inductions.

My first was that Banks had brought the car here the night before with the
fixed intention of abducting Brenda Jervaise.

My second was that the confounded fellow had cautiously removed some
essential part of the car's mechanism.

My third, that he woul