I heard the stranger chuckle. "I really must trouble you to obey my wishes," he replied, with ironic courtesy. "Otherwise I shall be compelled to do some damage to that car of yours, a proceeding I always try to avoid if possible."
"Do what you please," was in effect Winter's luridly adjectived answer.
"If you do not pull up within thirty seconds your fate will be upon your own heads," said the stranger, shortly, as he laid his hand upon a lever.
His car leapt away from ours, and though we were running nearly sixty miles an hour, we might have been standing still, he dropped us so rapidly. In fifteen seconds he had vanished in a cloud of dust ahead.
"I'm going to stop," said Winter, abruptly. He suited the action to the word, and none too soon.
Again we heard the curious drone of the strange car as it swooped down upon us, coming to a sudden halt a yard distant, with really beautiful precision.
"What do you want?" shouted Winter, in his gruffest tones.
"I'm glad to find you have had the wisdom to do as I desired you," said the Motor Pirate; for it was indeed he with whom we were now face to face. "It would have deeply grieved me to wreck so good a car as that you have there. A Daimler, I believe?"
"Oh, d——n your compliments! What is it you want?" growled Winter.
"Merely any articles of jewellery and any money you may happen to have about you," remarked the stranger, pleasantly.