He felt himself irresistibly propelled towards Drummond’s car, with only time for a fleeting glimpse at his own four flat tyres, and almost before he realised it they were away. After a few minutes, when he had recovered from his surprise, his hand went instinctively to his pocket, to find the revolver had gone. And it was then that the man he had thought mad laughed gently.
“Didn’t know I was once a pickpocket, did you?” he remarked affably. “A handy little gun too. Is it all right, Peter?”
“All safe,” came a voice from behind.
“Then dot him one!”
The sleuth had a fleeting vision of stars of all colours which danced before his eyes, coupled with a stunning blow on the back of the head. Vaguely he realised the car was pulling up—then blackness. It was not till four hours later that a passing labourer, having pulled him out from a not over-dry ditch, laid him out to cool. And incidentally, with his further sphere of usefulness we are not concerned....
IV
“My dear fellow, I told you we’d get here somehow.” Hugh Drummond stretched his legs luxuriously. “The fact that it was necessary to crash your blinking bus in a stray field in order to avoid their footling passport regulations is absolutely immaterial. The only damage is a dent in Ted’s dicky, but all the best waiters have that. They smear it with soup to show their energy.... My God! Here’s another of them.”
A Frenchman was advancing towards them down the stately vestibule of the Ritz waving protesting hands. He addressed himself in a voluble crescendo to Drummond, who rose and bowed deeply. His knowledge of French was microscopic, but such trifles were made to be overcome.
“Mais oui, Monsieur mon Colonel,” he remarked affably, when the gendarme paused for lack of breath, “vous comprenez que notre machine avait crashé dans un field des turnipes. Nous avons lost notre direction. Nous sommes hittés dans l’estomacs.... Comme ci, comme ca.... Vous comprenez, n’est-ce-pas, mon Colonel?” He turned fiercely on Jerry. “Shut up, you damn fool; don’t laugh!”
“Mais, messieurs, vous n’avez pas des passeports.” The little man, torn between gratification at his rapid promotion and horror at such an appalling breach of regulations, shot up and down like an agitated semaphore. “Vous comprenez; c’est defendu d’arriver en Paris sans des passeports?”