t, it went somewhere, and it was
a hiding place. Seated amongst these people he felt intuitively that a
viewless barrier lay between him and his pursuers, that it was the very
last place a man in search of a runaway would glance at.

He was right. Whilst the char-a-banc still lingered on the chance of a
last customer, the running policeman--he was walking now, appeared at
the sea end of the street. He was a young man with a face like an apple,
he wore a straw helmet--Northbourne serves out straw helmets for its
police and straw hats for its horses on the first of June each year--and
he seemed blown. He was looking about him from right to left, but he
never looked once at the char-a-banc and its contents. He went on, and
round the corner of the street he vanished, still looking about him.

A few moments later the vehicle started. The contents were cheerful and
communicative one with the other, conversing freely on all sorts of
matters, and Jones, listening despite himself, gathered all sorts of
information on subjects ranging from the pictures then exhibiting at the
cinema palace, to the price of butter.

He discovered that the contents consisted of three family
parties--exclusive of the honeymoon couple--and that the appearance of
universal fraternity was deceptive, that the parties were exclusive, the
conversation of each being confined to its own members.

So occupied was his mind by these facts that they were a mile and a half
away from Northbourne and in the depths of the country before a great
doubt seized him.

He called across the heads of the others to the driver asking where they
were going to.

"Sandbourne-on-Sea," said the driver.

Now, though the Sandbournites hate the Northbournites as the Guelphs the
Ghibellines, though the two towns are at advertisemental war, the
favourite pleasure drive of the char-a-bancs of Sandbourne is to
Northbourne, and vice versa. It is chosen simply because the road is the
best thereabouts, and the gradients the easiest for the horses.

"Sandbourne-on-Sea?" cried Jones.

"Yes," said the driver.

The vision of himself being carted back to Sandbourne-on-Sea with that
crowd and then back again to Northbourne--if he were not
caught--appeared to Jones for the moment as the last possible grimace of
Fate. He struggled to get out, calling to the driver that he did not
want to go to Sandbourne. The vehicle stopped, and the driver demanded
the full fare--two shillings. Jones p