oles and shells on their way to make new
holes, in a black rainstorm at midnight--this sort of thing," Jules
announced--"a hard, smooth road under a clear sky--is simple pie."

So it may have seemed to him. But to Lanyard and Liane Delorme, hurled
along a road they could not see at anywhere from forty to sixty miles
an hour, with no manner of guidance other than an elusive tail-lamp
which was forever whisking round corners and remaining invisible till
Jules found his way round in turn, by instinct or second sight or
intuition--whatever it was, it proved unfailing--it was a nervous
time.

And there was half an hour of it...

They were swooping down a long grade with a sharp turn at the bottom,
as they knew from the fact that the red eye had just winked out,
somewhere on ahead, there sounded a grinding crash, the noise of a
stout fabric rent and crushed with the clash and clatter of shivered
glass.

"Easy," Lanyard cautioned--"and ready with the lights!"

Both warnings were superfluous. Jules had already disengaged the gears.
Gravity carried the car round the curve, slowly, smoothly, silently;
under constraint of its brakes it slid to a pause on a steep though
brief descent, and hung there like an animal poised to spring, purring
softly.

Below, at the foot of the hill, the headlights of another car, standing
at some distance and to the right of the road, furnished lurid
illumination to the theatre of disaster.

Something, its nature just then mysterious, had apparently caused Leon
to lose control of the heavy car, so that it had skidded into a ditch
and capsized. Four men, crude shapes of nightmare in enveloping
dust-coats and disfiguring goggles, were swarming round the wreck. Two
were helping the driver out, two others having their gallantry in
performing like service for the maid rewarded by a torrent of
vituperative denunciation, half hysterical and wholly infuriated.

By the freedom of her gestures, which was rivalled only by that of her
language, the dishevelled, storming figure of Marthe was manifestly
uninjured. And in another moment it was seen, as Leon found his feet
and limped toward the others, that he had suffered only slight damage
at the worst.

Lanyard drew attention to a dark serpentine line that lay like a dead
snake upon the lighted surface of the road. Jules grunted in token of
comprehension. Liane Delorme breathlessly demanded: "What is it?"

"An old trick," Lanyard explained: "A wire ca