Whack!
The red light had glowed, and the strap had swung home again. Flager pulled himself together with a curse. It was no good getting careless now that he had mastered the machine. But he was beginning to feel tired. His eyes were starting to ache a little with the strain of keeping themselves glued watchfully to the cinematograph screen ahead. The interminable unwinding of that senseless road, the shirr of the unseen projector, the physical effort of manipulating the heavy steering wheel, the deadly monotony of the task, combined with the heavy dinner he had eaten and a long sequence of other dinners behind it to produce a sensation of increasing drowsiness. But the unwinding of the road never slackened speed, and the leather strap never failed to find its mark every time his wearying attention caused him to make a mistake.
"You're getting careless about your corners," the Saint warned him tirelessly. "You'll be in the ditch at the next one. Look out!"
The flickering screen swelled up and swam in his vision. There was nothing else in the world — nothing but that endlessly winding road uncoiling out of the darkness, the lights of other traffic that leapt up from it, the red light above the screen, and the smack of the leather strop across his shoulders. His brain seemed to be spinning round like a top inside his head when at last, amazingly, the screen went black and the other bulbs in the garage lighted up.
"You can go to sleep now," said the Saint.
Sir Melvin Flager was incapable of asking questions. A medieval prisoner would have been no more capable of asking questions of a man who released him from the rack. With a groan he slumped back in his seat and fell asleep.
It seemed as if he had scarcely closed his eyes when he was roused again by someone shaking him. He looked up blearily and saw the strange chauffeur leaning over him.
"Wake up," said Peter Quentin. "It's five o'clock on Saturday morning, and you've got a lot more miles to cover."
Flager had no breath to dispute the date. The garage lights had gone out again, and the road was starting to wind out of the cinematograph screen again.
"But you told me I could sleep!" he moaned.