Something, its nature just then mysterious, had apparently caused Leon to lose control of the heavy car, so that it had skidded into a ditch and capsized.  Four men, crude shapes of nightmare in enveloping dust-coats and disfiguring goggles, were swarming round the wreck.  Two were helping the driver out, two others having their gallantry in performing like service for the maid rewarded by a torrent of vituperative denunciation, half hysterical and wholly infuriated.

By the freedom of her gestures, which was rivalled only by that of her language, the dishevelled, storming figure of Marthe was manifestly uninjured.  And in another moment it was seen, as Leon found his feet and limped toward the others, that he had suffered only slight damage at the worst.

Lanyard drew attention to a dark serpentine line that lay like a dead snake upon the lighted surface of the road.  Jules grunted in token of comprehension.  Liane Delorme breathlessly demanded:  “What is it?”

“An old trick,” Lanyard explained:  “A wire cable stretched between trees diagonally across the road, about as high as the middle of the windshield.  The impetus of the limousine broke it, but not before it had slewed the car off toward the ditch, wrenching the wheel out of the driver’s hands.”

He fondled the pistol which Jules had handed him, slipped the safety catch, and said:  “Now before they wake up, Jules—­give her all she’s got!”

Jules released the brakes and, as the car gathered way, noiselessly slipped the gear shift into the fourth speed and bore heavily on the accelerator.  They were making forty miles an hour when they struck the level and thundered past the group.

A glimpse of startled faces, the scream of a man who had strayed incautiously into the roadway and stopped there, apparently petrified by the peril that bore down upon him without lights or any other warning, until one of the forward fenders struck and hurled him aside like a straw—­and only the night of the open road lay before them.  Jules touched the headlight switch and opened the exhaust.  Above the roaring of the latter Lanyard fancied he could hear a faint rattling sound.  He looked back and smiled grimly.  Sharp, short flames of orange and scarlet were stabbing the darkness.  Somebody had opened fire with an automatic pistol....  Sheer waste of ammunition!

The pace waxed terrific on a road, like so many roads of France, apparently interminable and straight.  On either hand endless ranks of poplars rattled like loose palings of some tremendous picket fence.  And yet, long before the road turned, Lanyard, staring astern as he knelt on the rear seat with arms crossed on the folded top, saw the two white eyes of the grey car swing into view and start in pursuit.  Quick work, he called it.

He crawled forward and communicated his news, shouting to make himself heard.

“Don’t ease up unless you have to,” he counselled; “don’t think we dare give them an inch.”