nterrupted her impatiently, with an order to chuck out her
passenger--minor considerations had no weight with him--everything,
everybody must be sacrificed to the need of the moment.

"Minor considerations?" said Auriole bitterly. "You speak as if you'd
carried the game alone, as far as it has gone. But it was my
passenger--the man you want to chuck out--who made it possible. The
man who was tortured while you were free to----"

She did not finish the sentence for even as she spoke Richard Frencham
Altar stepped shakily from the car and came toward them. The
extraordinary resemblance between the two men wrung a cry of amazement
from Flora.

"Barraclough?" said Richard rocking on his heels. "Pretty
extraordinary meeting like this on the finishing straight. How goes?"

"Good God, man!" said Anthony. "They put you through it."

"That's all right," said Richard. "Never mind paying a price if you
win the game."

"Get back into the car," Auriole pleaded. "You'll be caught again."

But he put her aside.

"Wait a bit--wait a bit. Looks as if my job isn't finished yet.
What's the trouble here?" and he nodded at the wrecked car.

It was Flora who poured out the story of the chase and ultimate smash
and at the very moment of explanation the lights of Harrison Smith's
Ford flashed for a moment upon the sky line to reappear a second later
creeping down the avenue of trees on the hillside.

"Look, look," she cried.

To Anthony Barraclough it was a novel experience to act on another
man's orders. In that instant of gathering danger Richard Frencham
Altar became captain of the situation. He literally flung Anthony into
the car and refused to listen to Auriole's protests.

"We're players of a game, aren't we?" he said, "and we're going to play
it to a finish. I think, too, it 'ud do me good to have one clean
smack at 'em before I'm through."

He hardly knew how it came about that he and Auriole kissed one
another--somehow they found time for that and as the car moved away she
leant out to say:

"You dear brave wonderful Sportsman."

Then he and Flora were alone in the road watching the red rear lamp
disappear into the night.

"You've got some pluck," said Flora. As she helped him into the cloak
that Anthony had thrown aside. "Going to wait and hold 'em up?"

"May as well. That little two seater would never have carried four.
Got a gun by any chance?"

"No, he had mine. Didn't he give it to you?"