“Twenty to one!” he murmured.  He had a hunted look on his face.  Monica saw it and it sobered her.

They got up in front, and I sat in the body of the car.

“Hang on to that!” said Francis, handing me over a leather case.  I recognized it at a glance.  It was Clubfoot’s dispatch-box.  Francis was thorough in everything.

Once more we dashed out along the desolate country roads.  We saw hardly a soul.  Houses were few and far between and, save for an occasional greybeard hoeing in the wet fields or an old woman hobbling along the road, the countryside seemed dead.  In the cold air the engine ran splendidly, and Francis got every ounce of horse-power out of it.

On we rushed, the wind in our ears, the cold air in our faces, until we found ourselves racing along an avenue of old trees that led straight as an arrow right into the heart of the forest.  It was as silent as the grave:  the air was dank and chill and the trees dripped sorrowfully into the brimming ruts of the road.

We whizzed past many tracks leading into the depths of the forest, but it was not until the car had eaten up some five kilometres of the main road that Francis slowed to a halt.  He consulted a map he pulled from his pocket, then glanced at his watch with puckered brow.

“I had hoped to take the car into the forest,” he said, “but the roads are so soft we shan’t get a yard.  Still we can but try.”

We went forward again, very slowly, to where a track ran off to the left.  It was badly ploughed up, and the ruts were fully a foot deep.  Monica and I got out to lighten the car, and Francis ran her in.  But he hadn’t gone five yards before the car was bogged up to the axles.

“We’ll have to leave it,” he said, jumping out.  “It’s ten minutes to two ... we haven’t a second to lose.”

He pulled a cloth cap from the pocket of his military overcoat, then stripped off the coat, showing his ordinary clothes underneath, and very shiny black field-boots up to his knees.  He put his helmet in the overcoat and made a roll of it, tucking it under his arm, and then donned his cap.

“Now,” he said, “We’ll have to run for it, Monica, I’m afraid:  we must reach our cover while the light lasts or I shan’t be able to find it and it will be dark in these woods in about two hours from now.  Are you ready?”

We struck off the track into the forest.  There was not much undergrowth, and the trees were not planted very close, so our way was not impeded.  We jogged on over a carpet of wet leaves, stumbling over the roots of the trees, tearing our clothes on the brambles, bringing down showers of raindrops from the branches of pine or fir we brushed on our headlong course.  Now a squirrel bolted up his tree, now a rabbit frisked back into his hole, now a soft-eyed deer crashed away into the bushes on our approach.  The place was so still that it gave me confidence.  There was not a trace of man now that we were away from the marks of his carts on the tracks, and I began to feel, in the presence of the stately, silent trees, that at last I was safe from the menace that had hung over me for so long.