As we slid through Marvel, the clock of the old grey church showed us that it was five and twenty to one.  We were in good time, for now but a short seven miles lay between us and the village which we sought.

Jonah settled himself in his seat and prepared to cover the last lap at an easier pace....

Before we had realized what was happening, it was all over.

The road which we were using ran at right angles into a better-class way by the side of an old oast-house.  Here, for Monk’s Honour, we must turn to the left.  Jonah, prince of drivers, slowed for the turn and sounded his horn carefully, for ours was the lesser road.  As we rounded the corner there was a deafening roar, a cry, a violent shock, a splintering crash, the Rolls quivered like a ship that has struck, and a great green touring car tore past and was gone in a cloud and a flurry of dust before we had come to rest with our near fore-wheel eighteen inches up the near-side bank.

Dazedly I watched a little white dog with a black patch take a flying leap into the road, stumble, pick himself up, and hurl himself in the wake of the monster, barking furiously.  Then the whirling dust swallowed him up, and I saw him no more.

“LF 8057,” said Daphne.  “LF 8057.  Write it down, somebody.  Quick.  LF 8057.”

“That’s right,” said Jonah.  “I got it too.  LF 8057.”

In silence I dragged a pencil out of my pocket and with trembling fingers wrote down the precious figures on the back of an envelope.

“Anybody hurt?” continued Jonah, screwing himself round to look at the back seat.

“We’re all right,” said I.  “But it was a close call.”

“The brute!” cried Jill passionately.  “The beastly stinking——­”

Berry spoke between his clenched teeth in a voice shaken with choler.

“We’ll have that blistered swine if we have to drag hell for him.  For all he knows, the car’s overturned and on fire, and we’re pinned under it.  It’s German.  Pure full-blooded German.  It’s the most verminous thing I’ve ever dreamed of.  It’s——­Burn it!  Words fail me.”

He rose and got out of the car.  I followed him and helped Jill to alight.  She was a little pale, and, when she saw the havoc on the off-side, her eyes began to fill with tears.

I put my arm about her.

“Don’t worry, darling.  It looks worse than it is.  And we’ll have that merchant’s blood.  We’ve got his number.”

Daphne came up to comfort her, and Jonah, after a cursory glance at the damage, limped to the opposite side of the road, sat down on the bank, and lighted a cigarette.

“What was he doing?” said Berry, his face still a dark red.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Shouldn’t like to say.  Maybe seventy.  Maybe more.  But it was a frightful pace.”  I pointed along the road to left and right.  “See how it curves.  And we’re on the outside of the bend.  To clear us at that pace, he’d ’ve had to go over himself.”