The door of the car was open. Ben looked at it; then at her; and then once more at the motionless heap on the ground.
‘Dead?’ said Ben thickly.
‘Quite,’ answered the woman. Her voice was low and rich, but as pitiless as cold steel.
‘Are you coming?’
Ben raised his face from death to life. Even in this dimness the woman’s eyes were dazzling. Ben’s heart turned black.
He nodded.
‘That’s right, miss,’ he murmured. ‘I’m comin’.’
The blackness in Ben’s heart was reflected in the car. The blinds were drawn, and as the car shot forward he found himself travelling in a darkness that seemed to creep right up to him and touch him.
By his side was the beautiful woman. Even in this enveloping darkness that affected both sight and soul he remained conscious of her beauty, just as he had been conscious of it while staring at death. It brushed his ragged sleeve as the car swung abruptly round a corner. It whispered to him through the fragrance of scent. It electrified the black atmosphere. Ben was not impervious to beauty, and he could stare with incoherent appreciation at a sunset, or watch little children dancing to a piano-organ, or pause, futilely desirous, at the photograph of a naughty chorus girl wrapped round a pound of cheese. But he hardened himself against the beauty he was now encountering, for it presided in enemy territory.
Ahead of him, driving, was another figure. A big, smudgy figure in a large overcoat. There was no beauty in this dim outline. It was sinister and forbidding, and reminded Ben of Carnera. He found himself wondering how long, if it came to a fight, he would be able to stand up against that massive frame. He worked it out at five seconds less six.
But the big figure in the large overcoat had another kind of tussle on at the moment. Emerging suddenly from his dazed thoughts, Ben became conscious of it when the car took another violent curve that brought the woman’s shoulder hard against his own. He heard a shout. The car swerved. He heard a shot. The car accelerated dizzily. Another corner. Straight again. Another corner. Straight again. Plop! Ting! Two little holes. One in the small window in the back of the car, one in the windscreen. A straight line between the two holes separated, and cleared by three inches, two heads.
‘All right, Fred?’ inquired the owner of one of the heads, coolly; while the owner of the other head thought, less coolly, ‘Lumme!’
The big figure in the large overcoat nodded. The car flew on.
‘And you?’ asked the woman, turning to Ben.
It was the first time she had addressed Ben since they had entered the car. ‘Now wot I’ve gotter do,’ reflected Ben, ‘is to pertend it ain’t nothink, like ’er!’ Aloud he responded, with elaborate carelessness:
‘Corse! ’Oo minds a little thing like that?’
She smiled. He could not see the smile, but he felt it. It came to you, like her scent.
‘Item, courage,’ were her next words. ‘Well, I’m glad you’ve got that, for you’ll need it.’
‘’Ooray,’ thought Ben.
‘But, after all,’ she went on, ‘one expects courage from those who have been awarded the D.S.O.’
‘’Oo’s that?’ jerked Ben.
‘Distinguished Skull Order.’ She touched his gruesome pin with a slender finger. ‘You must tell me one day what you got it for. I expect you’ve a nice little selection of bedtime stories. But have you ever been shot at twice in five minutes before? You have to thank our driver for saving you the first time.’
‘Eh? When was the fust time?’ blinked Ben.
He couldn’t remember it, and the notion that he was under any obligation to the driver was not one that went to his heart. When had the ugly brute saved him?
‘Don’t play poker-face with me!’ retorted the woman. ‘You know as well as I do!… Oh, but of course—I see what you mean. The detective didn’t actually shoot at you—he was merely going to. Well, Fred was a fool to interfere. If you’d got in a mess, it was your affair to get out of it. However he lost his head, so I hope you’ll prove worth the risk he took by not losing yours!’
Ben’s mind swung back to the instant just before the detective had fallen. The detective had raised his revolver. The driver of the approaching car—this hulking brute a couple of feet ahead—had seen and misinterpreted the action. He had fired. The detective had dropped. And, for this, Ben had to thank him!
‘One day I’ll thank ’im in a way ’e won’t fergit!’ decided Ben.
Meanwhile, he must keep cool, and organise the few wits he possessed. He would have to display a few of those wits, to justify membership of the Distinguished Skull Order!
‘Ah—then it wasn’t you wot fired the gun?’ he murmured. ‘It wasn’t you wot killed ’im?’
‘I never lose my head,’ answered the woman, with a contemptuous glance towards the driver’s back.
‘I didn’t ’ear no bang,’ said Ben.
‘There wasn’t any bang,’ replied the woman.
‘Oh—one o’ them things,’ nodded Ben. ‘That’s the kind wot I uses. Orl bite and no bark!’
The driver shifted impatiently in his seat.
‘Do you suppose you could bark a little less?’ he growled. ‘We aren’t out of the wood yet!’
‘Keep your nerve, Fred,’ observed the woman calmly. ‘We’re keeping ours. I rather like our new recruit’s Oxford accent.’
Lumme, she was cool! Ben had to concede her that. But so were snakes. They could stay still for an hour. And then—bing!
A minute later, while a police whistle sounded faintly in the distance, the car turned up a by-street and stopped. The woman opened the door and leapt out with the speed of a cat. Ben followed obediently. The driver remained in his seat.
‘Be with you in five minutes,’ the driver muttered.
The whistle sounded again, not quite so distantly.
‘No, you won’t, Fred,’ said the woman. ‘Five hours, at least!’
‘Oh! What’s the idea?’
‘That you use the wits God is supposed to have given you. If you can’t shake off the police, you’re no good to me.’
‘Well, haven’t
