“You can catch the ten-five for Gloucester, Elk, but somehow I don’t think it will get through.”
“As a telephone expert,” said Elk, as he patiently applied himself to the instrument, “I have many of the qualities that make, so to speak, for greatness. Hullo! Get me Great Western, please. Great Western Stationmaster. . . . I have a perfect voice, a tremendous amount of patience, and a faith in my fellow-man, and—Hullo! Is that you, Stationmaster? . . . Inspector Elk. I told you that before—no, it was somebody else. Inspector Elk, C.I.D. Is there any trouble on your road to-night?” . . . A longer pause this time. “Glory be!” said Elk unemotionally. “Any chance of getting through? . . . None whatever? What time will you have trains running? . . . Thank you.”
He turned to Dick.
“Three culverts and a bridge down at Swindon, blown at seven o’clock; two men in custody; one man dead, shot by rail guard. Two culverts down at Reading; the metals blown up at Slough. I won’t trouble to call up the other roads, because—well, the Frog’s thorough.”
Dick Gordon opened a cupboard and took out a leather coat and a soft leather helmet. In his drawer he found two ugly-looking Browning pistols and examined their magazines before he slipped them into his pocket. Then he selected half-a-dozen cigars, and packed them carefully in the breast pocket of the coat.
“You’re not going alone, Gordon?” asked Elk sternly. Dick nodded.
“I’m going alone,” he said. “If I don’t get through, you follow. Send a police car after me and tell them to drive carefully. I don’t think they’ll stop me this side of Newbury,” he said. “I can make that before the light goes. Tell Miss Bennett that the reprieve is signed, and that I am on my way.”
Elk said nothing, but followed his chief into the street, and stood by him with the policeman who had been left in charge of the car, while Dick made a careful scrutiny of the tyres and petrol tank.
So Dick Gordon took the Bath road; and the party of gunmen that waited at the two aerodromes of London to shoot him down if he attempted to leave by the aerial route, waited in vain. He avoided the direct road to Reading, and was taking the longer way round. He came into Newbury at eleven o’clock, and learnt of more dynamited culverts. The town was full of it. Two laden trains were held up on the down line, and their passengers thronged the old-fashioned streets of the town. Outside The Chequers he spoke to the local inspector of police. Beyond the outrages they had heard nothing, and apparently the road was in good order, for a car had come through from Swindon only ten minutes before Dick arrived.
“You’re safe as far as Swindon, anyway,” said the inspector. “The countryside has been swarming with tramps lately, but my mounted patrols, that have just come in, have seen none on the roads.”