Without clear comprehension of what was happening, Sofia heard shouts from the other car, now at a standstill, and an oddly syncopated popping.  The window in the door on Victor’s side rang like a cracked bell, shivered, and fell inward, clashing.  With a growl of rage, Victor bent forward and levelled an arm through the opening.  From his hand truncated tongues of orange flame, half a dozen of them, stabbed the gloom to an accompaniment of as many short and savage barks.

Then the chains at last bit through to a purchase, the car scrambled to the crown of the road and lunged precipitately away; and the lights of the other dropped astern in the space of a rest between heartbeats.

Sitting back, Victor turned on the dome light again, and extracting an empty magazine clip from the butt of his automatic pistol, replaced it with another, loaded.

From this occupation he looked up with lips curling in contempt of Sofia’s terror.

“Your friends,” he observed, “were a thought behindhand, eh?  When you come to know me better, my dear, you’ll find they invariably are—­with me.”

Aftermath of fright made her tongue inarticulate; and Victor’s sneer took on a colour of mean amusement.

“Something on your mind?”

She twisted her hands together till the laced fingers hurt.

“Wha-what are you go-going to do with me?”

“Make good use of you, dear child,” he laughed:  “be sure of that!”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know ...”

“Really not?  But there I think you do injustice to your admirable intelligence.”

The jeering laugh sounded as he put out the light again, in darkness the derisive voice pursued: 

“If you must know in so many words—­well, I mean to keep you by me till the final curtain falls.  As long as it lasts, yours will be an interesting life—­I give my word.”

“And you call yourself my father!”

“Oh, no!  No, indeed:  that’s all over and done with, the farce is played out; and while I’m aware my role in it wasn’t heroic, I shan’t play the purblind fool in the afterpiece—­pure drama—­upon which the curtain is now rising.  Neither need you.  Oh, I’ll be frank with you, if you wish, lay all my cards on the table.”

A deliberate pause ended in a chuckle.

“I have at present precisely two uses for my precious little Sofia:  She will serve excellently as insurance against further persecution on the part of her accomplished and energetic father—­with whom I shall deal in my good leisure—­and ...  But need one be crudely explicit?”

Sofia answered nothing to that, for a long time she said nothing, but sat pondering....

And Victor was speedily provided with another interest which engrossed him to the exclusion of further efforts to bait a victim defenseless against his insolence.

When for the third time after that narrow scrape at the gates the man roused up to peer back through the rear window of the limousine, Sofia heard a harshly sibilant intake of breath between shut teeth, and surmised the discovery that the car which had so narrowly missed blocking their escape had picked up the trail, and was now in hot chase.