“Take the direct road,” he said to the driver. “Swindon—Gloucester. Good night.”
“Good night, sir.”
He watched anxiously as the machine swung into the main road. Still he waited, his head bent. Two minutes went by, and the faint sound of a motor-horn, a long blast and a short, and he sighed.
“They’re clear of the danger zone,” he said.
Plop!
He saw the flash, heard the smack of the bullet as it struck the door, and his hand stiffened. There was a thudding sound—a scream of pain from a dark corner of the mews and the sound of voices. Leon drew back into the yard and bolted the door.
“He had a new kind of silencer. Oberzohn is rather a clever old bird. But my air pistol against their gun for noiselessness.”
“I didn’t expect the attack from that end of the mews.” Manfred was slipping a Browning back to his pocket.
“If they had come from the other end the car would not have passed—I’d like to get one of those silencers.”
They went into the house. Poiccart had already extinguished the passage light.