Men of Affairs Part 63

But Hilbert Torrington was at the telephone. What he actually said sounded incomprehensible, but what it actually meant to the man who received it was an order to despatch a dozen men immediately to the doors of the flats and distribute a sprinkling over the neighbouring streets. There might be a fight, there probably would. If Barraclough were seen a body guard was to be formed at once.

Isabel was repeating her question at the window.

"Those men! Who are they? What does it mean?"

It was Cranbourne who had the honesty to reply.

"Danger!"

CHAPTER 33.

A SMASH UP.

Flora's handling of the old Panhard was beyond praise. Accurate, well judged and with just enough dash of risk at cross roads or in traffic to steal an extra mile or two on the average speed per hour. The night had chilled and Anthony Barraclough, wrapped in his mother's cloak watched the girl beside him with a queer mixture of admiration and impatience. Admiration for her faultless nerve and impatience that the car for all its ancient virtue in no sense could be termed a speed-monger. Flora's att.i.tude amused him too, it was so tremendously intense, so devoted to duty and withal so exactingly efficient. There is no particular reason why it should be so, but it always tickles the male sense of humour to watch a woman do a man's job as capably as a man himself could do it. Her conduct when they punctured on the long stretch between Wimbourne and Ringwood had been exemplary. She jacked up, changed wheels and was away again in the shortest possible time.

True a little over a quarter of an hour was lost, but the locking ring had rusted in its thread, as sometimes happens, and it was heavy work for a girl to shift it unaided. She had forbidden Barraclough to help and had made him picket a hundred yards down the road in case the pursuers should come up unexpectedly.

After that all had gone well--except for a plug sooting on number three cylinder and a halt for petrol about fifty miles outside London. A full moon had risen with sundown which lit the countryside brightly, and made the run almost as easy as by day.

Only once did Barraclough see the pursuing Ford, two spots of light visible from the top of the rise threading through the valley five miles to the rear. Of course, it might have been any other car, but a kind of second sense convinced him that this was not the case. He did not confide to Flora what he had seen, but the tapping of his foot on the floor-board gave her the information as surely as any spoken word.

She startled him not a little by rapping out the enquiry:

"How much lead have we got."

"Five miles."

"We shall do it. They won't average more than twenty-eight and we're good for that. Where are we now?"

"Hogs-back."

"What's time?"

"'Bout ten to eleven."

"Hm! Think they'll shove any obstacles in the way?"

"Depends," said Anthony. "If they sent a message through it's pretty certain we may run into a hold up."

"Going to chance it?"

"No. We'll slip off the main road at Cobham and trickle in through the byes."

"Right oh! tell me when."

For some miles they drove in silence and once again between Ripley and Guildford had a glimpse of the following lights. With a considerable shock Barraclough realised that the distance separating the two cars had greatly diminished. But hereabouts an unexpected piece of luck favoured them. At a point where the road narrowed between hedges a farm gate was thrown open and a flock of sheep was driven out into the highway. Flora contrived to dash past before the leaders of the flock came through the gate. Another second and she would have been too late. Glancing back Anthony observed that the entire road was solid with sheep, a compact ma.s.s that moved neither forward nor backward.

"Our friends'll lose five minutes penetrating that," he announced gleefully.

It did not occur to him until later that every one of those woolly ewes was an unknowing servant of Hugo van Diest and that their presence in the road was the direct result of a wire dispatched to a quiet little man named Phillips who had been given the task of making the way into London difficult. Mr. Phillips had not had very much time, but he had done his best. A series of telegraph poles had been cut down outside Staines, Slough, and at various points along the Portsmouth road. A huge furniture van with its wheels off obstructed the narrows at Brentford, and in one or two places wires had been drawn across the King's highway.

It was the side turning at Cobham saved them running into one of these obstacles by a narrow margin of scarcely a hundred yards. Also it was the side turning, b.u.mpy narrow and twisted that proved their undoing.

An upward climb, a perilously fast descent, a corner taken a trifle too fine, a sharp flint, a burst front tyre, and at a point where two roads crossed the veteran car almost somersaulted into a ditch, wrecked beyond hope of repair. They were doing forty when it happened and it was a miracle they escaped with their lives.

Flora was first to scramble over the tilted side and survey the ruins of their hopes. Anthony still wrapped in his mother's cloak followed and shook his head over the extent of the damage.

"You hurt?" he asked.

"No. Are you?"

"I'm all right. What happened?"

"Front tyre. Wheel fairly kicked out of my hand."

"It's d.a.m.n bad luck," said Anthony.

"Brutal." She bent over and switched off her lights. "What are we going to do?"

He looked at a sign-post, knocked crooked by the car when it plunged off the metal into the ditch.

"This road leads from Oxshott--London that way. With any luck we might get a lift."

"Late for anything to be about." She looked back along the way they had come. The road could be seen threading its way among pines for a couple of miles or more. "We shall know they're coming five minutes before they can get here. Still I suppose you won't wait for them."

"No fear. Couldn't put up much of a fight with this hand."

"Pigs," said Flora. "I'd like to kill them."

"Both sides are pretty lethal. Wouldn't fancy my chances if----"

"You think they'd----"

"Course they would. Why in blazes doesn't something roll up? Bet your life if they can't get the concession for themselves they'll take precious good care no one else shall profit by it." He paced up and down looking this way and that. "It was like my infernal conceit bringing the thing through myself. Anyone but an idiot would have registered it from Cherbourg. Almost wish we'd stuck to the main road.

There'd have been some traffic there. d.a.m.n all motorists who're in bed tonight."

Very faintly through the thin night air came the throb of an engine.

Flora clutched his arm.

"D'you hear?"

"They're coming."

"That's no Ford," she said. "It's coming from over there." And she pointed toward Oxshott.