Birrel felt a frantic desire to rip the door open and plunge out of the car, to run and lose himself in the cheerful crowds.
He couldn't. He'd taken the job and he had to go through with it—to find out where their base was, to find out what threat they represented.
"But I have to play it alone," he thought, with sinking heart.
Connor and Paley and the rest, who had planned so carefully to follow them, had never foreseen that stunning force that had struck.
Birrel became aware that they had crossed town and were running through the Lincoln Tunnel. In a few minutes they were on a main highway, heading north.
How long could he keep up this imposture? How long till he made some slip, some blunder—
Holmer, his voice quiet but with a sudden edge to it, said, "There's a car following us. I wasn't sure till we got through the Tunnel."
With sudden reaction, Birrel's hopes leaped. Then Connor and the others had come to in time to follow? Yet it hardly seemed possible....
"Vannevan!" Kara's exclamation was so fierce that it startled him.
"It can't be anybody else," Holmer grimly agreed. "That newspaper story about the captured spy—it drew him to the prison too, it seems."