Her lashes fluttered as she racked her brains for new protests.

“The car is a French make,” she urged,—­“which you couldn’t drive—­”

“I can drive any car with four wheels!” I exclaimed vaingloriously.  “It’s kismet, Miss Falconer; it’s the hand of Providence, no less.  Now, we’ll leave these notes in the salle a manger to pay for our lodging, which would have been dear at twopence, and be off, if you please, for Prezelay.”

She had yielded.  We were standing side by side in the silence of the morning, the dimness fading round us, the air taking a golden tinge.  My surroundings were plebeian; my costume was comic; yet I felt oddly uplifted.

“Jolly old garden, isn’t it?” said I.

CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE HIGH GEAR

To pass straight from a humdrum, comfortable, conventionally ordered life into a career of insane adventure is a step that is radical; but it can be exhilarating, and I proved the fact that day.  To dwell on present danger was to forget the past hour in the garage, which I had to forget or begin gibbering.  Once committed to the adventure and away from the scene of the murder, I found a positive relief in facing the madness of the affair.

While the girl sat silent and listless, blotted against the cushions, rousing from her thoughts only to indicate the turns of the road, I had time for cogitation; and I began to feel like a man who has drunk freely of champagne.  Hitherto I had been a law-abiding citizen.  Now I had kicked over the traces.  Like the distinguished fraternity that includes Raffles and Arsene Lupin, I should be “wanted” by the police, those good-natured, deferential beings so given to saluting and grinning, with whom, save for occasional episodes not unconnected with the speed laws,—­Dunny says libelously that my progress in an automobile resembles a fabulous monster with a flying car for the head, a cloud of smoke and gasoline for the body, and a cohort of incensed motor-cycle men for the tail,—­I had lived on the most cordial terms.

I was not certain whether they would accuse me of murder or espionage.  There were pegs enough, undeniably, on which to hang either charge.  Myself, I rather inclined to the latter; the case was so clear, so detailed!  My rush from Paris to Bleau,—­in order, no doubt, that I might at an unostentatious spot join forces with my confederate, Miss Falconer, whom I had been meeting at intervals ever since we left New York in company,—­my behavior there, and the fashion in which we were vanishing should suffice to doom me as a spy.