They dashed up the hill, travelling almost at the same speed as the other car. As they passed the church they saw it a speck in the distance, climbing the next hill. Lavendale slipped in his fourth speed.
'Thank God for the dust!' he muttered. 'We shall see which way they go. Hold on, Suzanne. We'll have to take risks.'
The air rushed past them. The finger of the spedometer crept up from thirty to fifty and sixty miles an hour. They swung round the corner, and through a tiny village, a cloud of dust rising behind, heedless of the curses shouted after them by the irate foot passengers.
'He's gone to the right,' Lavendale announced. 'That's Letheringsett. He'll leave the London road, though, if he can.'
'He'll try to give you the slip,' Major Elwell remarked, 'and take the train from somewhere.'
Lavendale smiled. The finger in front of them was still creeping upwards. They missed a hay wagon by a few inches. The pillar of dust in front of them grew nearer.
'We'll shepherd him into Fakenham,' Lavendale muttered. 'I could catch him now, if I wanted. They'll have had the message there, though.'
They skirted Letheringsett, up the hill, round corner after corner, through Thursford, with barely a hundred yards dividing them. Once, at some cross-roads, the car in front seemed to hesitate and they shot up to within fifty yards. The light now was becoming bad. There were little patches of shadow where the trees overhung the road.
'They're giving it up!' Lavendale exclaimed. 'By Jove, we've got them!'
He pointed forward. The road running into Fakenham narrowed. A line of three soldiers stood across the thoroughfare. With a grinding of brakes and ponderous swaying of the foremost car, the chase was over. Mr. Leonard Johnson descended, shaking the dust from his coat.