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, bumpy 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 damn 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. A