He ceased to peer nervously ahead in search of danger. Amberley never paid any attention to his warnings but drove on and on, very expertly, the sergeant had no doubt, but quite scandalously. The sergeant wondered in a detached way what his own position would be if they ran into or over something.
Hurtling along at over fifty miles an hour, and him a police officer! Nice set-out it would be if they went and killed somebody.
At the level-crossing, where they halted for the gates to be opened, they picked the trail up again, and even the battered sergeant felt that the speed had been justified when he heard that the Vauxhall had passed over no more than twenty minutes earlier.
Mr. Amberley's bleak look lightened. As he drove over the lines and changed up, he said: "I was right. We're going to shift a bit now, Sergeant."
"Well, I'll thank you to remember that this ain't Daytona Beach, sir," said the long-suffering sergeant. "Far from it. Now be careful of the bus, for Gawd's sake, Mr. Amberley!"
A country bus was grumbling along ahead, on the crown of the road. Mr. Amberley kept his hand on the hooter, but the bus meandered along unheeding. The Bentley charged past, mounting the tufty grass that bordered the lane and clearing the omnibus by inches.
The sergeant, clinging to the door, hung out to hurl invectives at the bus-driver, already out of earshot. A swerve round a bend brought him round with a bump. He mopped his face with a large handkerchief and said that what they seemed to want was a blooming tank, not a motorcar.
Chapter Eighteen
Littlehaven was a fishing village situated on the marshy alluviums where a small river emptied itself into the sea at the head of a creek, running about a mile inland. The village itself was old, with twisted streets smelling of seaweed and of tar. It had a small harbour, where the smacks rode at anchor, and over the beach were always to be found black nets, redolent of fish scales, spread out for mending. Westward along the coast, towards the mouth of the creek, a modern bungalow town had sprung up, for the place provided good boating and fishing, and in the season the sea was alive with small craft; and the one hotel, a gaunt structure towering above the one-storied houses, was so full that it could afford to charge extremely high prices for most inferior accommodation. Out of season half of it was shut up and the bungalows presented an equally deserted appearance. Most of them were owned by enterprising tradesmen who furnished them for the purpose of letting them at exorbitant rents for three months of the year and were content to allow them to stand empty for the remaining nine months.
Along the coast on the other side of the creek were a few better-built bungalows standing grandly apart. These were the privately owned houses, disdaining to rub shoulders with their humbler neighbours, even holding themselves discreetly aloof from each other. They boasted quite large gardens, and were served by a road from the town of Lowchester, some ten miles inland.