Laura started the engine, backed the car out of the lane and set off up the road. Getting into top gear, she drove steadily ahead at a rapidly increasing pace, her face as grim and set as she imagined that of an accessory to murder and professional thief should be. At her side Mr. Priestley bounced unhappily up and down, clinging desperately to the side of the car with his free hand and expecting every moment to be jerked backwards into the road. That in such an event his companion would be neatly extricated from the car to share his fate afforded him no consolation. Fortunately he was far too preoccupied for the moment in saving his own life at every twist or jolt in the road to be in a fit state to think coherently about what had happened since he last saw this car.
Laura, on the other hand, was thinking rapidly. Once the confusion had subsided of that wild rush from the house and her ignominious part in it, her brain had found itself free again to return to business. It was now working overtime.
Two thoughts were foremost in Laura’s mind. One was that this affair had turned into the most glorious rag that the mind of man (or girl) could conceive, and that nothing must be done to spoil it by so much as the set of a hair. The other was that Mr. Matthew Priestley had acquitted himself really most surprisingly, almost incredibly well. He had not only risen to the occasion and obligingly fired off the revolver, he had not only turned the tables on that ridiculous policeman and rescued the two of them from a situation which, if it had been as real as he thought it, would have been a remarkably ticklish one, he had not only proved himself in spite of circumstantial evidence to the contrary to be a man of courage, determination, decent feelings and resource, but (and perhaps this appealed to Laura more than all the foregoing catalogue of Mr. Priestley’s surprising virtues) his first thought from beginning to end had been for her alone, and that even after she had led him to think her a professional thief and therefore, according to the social code, of no personal account whatever. Laura felt herself warming quite a lot towards this normally mild little man with the heart of a bulldog.
But that did not go to say that she enjoyed being handcuffed to him. She did not. Indeed, in the presence of those handcuffs, it was difficult to see how this glorious rag was going to continue. Obviously they must be removed, and as soon as possible; or else they would have to go back and⸺
At this point Laura became aware that words were coming towards her, jerkily, over the side of the car.
“N-not so f-fast!” came the words spasmodically. “I can’t—hold on—m-much longer!”
Laura glanced at her speedometer; the needle was hovering between forty and fifty. She hastened to pull up at the side of the road.
“I’m so sorry,” she said contritely, as Mr. Priestley sobbed for breath and relief. Travelling outside the shelter of the windscreen at fifty miles an hour does knock the breath out of one.
“’Sallright,” gasped Mr. Priestley, drooping like a wet blanket over the side of the car. “But I thought—’f I fell out—you’d have to come—too—oof!”
“Good gracious!” observed Laura, much impressed. “Do you know, that simply never occurred to me.”