ble stretched between
trees diagonally across the road, about as high as the middle of the
windshield. The impetus of the limousine broke it, but not before it
had slewed the car off toward the ditch, wrenching the wheel out of the
driver's hands."

He fondled the pistol which Jules had handed him, slipped the safety
catch, and said: "Now before they wake up, Jules--give her all she's
got!"

Jules released the brakes and, as the car gathered way, noiselessly
slipped the gear shift into the fourth speed and bore heavily on the
accelerator. They were making forty miles an hour when they struck the
level and thundered past the group.

A glimpse of startled faces, the scream of a man who had strayed
incautiously into the roadway and stopped there, apparently petrified
by the peril that bore down upon him without lights or any other
warning, until one of the forward fenders struck and hurled him aside
like a straw--and only the night of the open road lay before them.
Jules touched the headlight switch and opened the exhaust. Above the
roaring of the latter Lanyard fancied he could hear a faint rattling
sound. He looked back and smiled grimly. Sharp, short flames of orange
and scarlet were stabbing the darkness. Somebody had opened fire with
an automatic pistol.... Sheer waste of ammunition!

The pace waxed terrific on a road, like so many roads of France,
apparently interminable and straight. On either hand endless ranks of
poplars rattled like loose palings of some tremendous picket fence. And
yet, long before the road turned, Lanyard, staring astern as he knelt
on the rear seat with arms crossed on the folded top, saw the two white
eyes of the grey car swing into view and start in pursuit. Quick work,
he called it.

He crawled forward and communicated his news, shouting to make himself
heard.

"Don't ease up unless you have to," he counselled; "don't think we dare
give them an inch."

Back at his post of observation, he watched, hoping against hope, while
the car lunged and tore like a mad thing through the night, snoring up
grades, screaming down them, drumming across the levels, clattering
wildly through villages and hamlets; while the moon rose and gathered
strength and made the road a streaming river of milk and ink; while his
heart sank as minute succeeded minute, mile followed mile, and ever the
lights of the pursuing car, lost to sight from time to time, reappeared
with a brighter, fiercer glow, and convic