“Quite so, sir.  And—­if you don’t mind my asking—­what’s the idea?”

“I presume you set some value on your skin?”

“Plumb crazy about it.”

“Mademoiselle Delorme and I are afflicted with the same idiosyncrasy.  We want to save our lives, and we don’t mind saving yours at the same time.”

“That’s more than fair with me.  But is that all I’m to know?”

“If the information is any comfort to you:  in a grey car which has been following us ever since we left St. Germain, is the man who—­I believe—­murdered Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes on the Lyons rapide, and who—­I know—­tried last night to murder Mademoiselle Delorme.”

“And I suppose that, in his big-hearted, wholesaler’s way, he wouldn’t mind making a bag of the lot of us tonight.”

“I’m afraid you have reason...”

“If you’re planning to put a crimp in his ambitions, sir, I’ve got a pistol I know how to use.”

“Better have it handy, though I don’t think we’ll need it yet.  Our present plan is merely to change cars with Leon and Marthe; the grey car will pass and go on ahead before we make the shift; then you, mademoiselle and I follow in the touring car, the others in the limousine.  If there’s a trap, as we have every reason to anticipate there will, the touring car will get through—­or we’ll hope so.”

“Ah-h!” Jules used the tone of one who perceives enlightenment as a blinding flash.  “Marthe and Leon are in on the dirty work too, eh?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Putting two and two together—­what you’ve just told me with what I’ve been noticing and wondering about.”

“Then you think those two—­”

“Marthe and Leon,” Jules pronounced with deliberation, “are two very bad eggs, if you ask me.  I shan’t shed a solitary tear if something sad happens to them in this ’bus to-night.”

There was no time then to delve into his reasons for this statement of feeling.  The outskirts of Caen were dropping behind.  Providentially, the first bend in the road to Bayeux afforded good cover on the side toward the town.  Jules shut off the power as he made the turn, and braked to a dead stop in lee of a row of outhouses.  Lanyard was on the ground as soon as the wheels ceased to turn, Jules almost as quickly.

“Now for your engine trouble,” Lanyard instructed.  “Nothing serious, you understand—­simply an adjustment to excuse a few minutes’ delay and lend colour to our impatience.”

“Got you the first time,” Jules replied, unlatching and raising one wing of the hood.

Lanyard moved toward the middle of the road and flagged the Delorme touring car as it rounded the turn, a few seconds later, at such speed that Leon was put to it to stop the car fifty yards beyond the limousine.  The man jumped down and, followed by the maid, ran back, but before he reached the limousine was obliged to jump aside to escape the grey car which, tooled by a crack racing hand, took the corner on two wheels, then straightened out and tore past in a smother of dust, with its muffler cut out and the exhaust bellowing like a machine-gun.