We slowed down with extraordinary rapidity, and still peering ahead we went dead-slow through it. I had not put on my goggles after leaving King’s Lynn, and the dust stung and smarted in my eyes. It was not, therefore, a belt of fog, but real road-dust. And at the moment we crept through it I felt Harry’s hands on my shoulder.
“There’s something just ahead,” he said. “Look! don’t you see the tail light?”
As a matter of fact, I did not; and, still going very slow, we came out of that dust-cloud. The broad empty road stretched in front of us; a hedge was on each side, and there was no turning either to right or left. Only, on the right, was a lodge, and gates which were closed. The lodge had no lights in any window.
Then we came to a standstill; the air was dead-calm, not a leaf in the hedgerow trees was moving, not a grain of dust was lifted from the road. But, behind, the dust-cloud still hung in the air, and stopped dead-short at the closed lodge-gates. We had moved very slowly for the last hundred yards: it was difficult to suppose that it was of our making. Then Jack spoke, with a curious crack in his voice.
“It must have been a motor, sir,” he said. “But where is it?”
I had no reply to this, and from behind another voice, Harry’s voice, spoke. For the moment I did not recognise it, for it was strained and faltering.
“Did you open the syren?” he asked. “It didn’t sound like our syren. It sounded like, like——”
“I didn’t open the syren,” said I.
Then we went on again. Soon we came to scattered lights in houses by the wayside.
“What’s this place?” I asked Jack.