Jones, walking swiftly, passed a sea-side boot shop, a butcher’s, greengrocer’s, and Italian warehouse—the same, to judge by the name over the door—that had sent forth the messenger boy on the bicycle. Then came a cinema palace, with huge pictures splashed across with yellow bands announcing:
“TO-NIGHT”
Then a milliner’s, then a post office, and lastly a livery stable.
In front of the latter stood a char-a-banc nearly full. A blackboard announced in white chalk: “Two hours drive two shillings,” and the congregation in the char-a-banc had that stamp. Stout women, children, a weedy man or two, and a honeymoon couple.
Jones, without the slightest hesitation, climbed into the char-a-banc. It seemed sent by Heaven. It was a seat, it went somewhere, and it was a hiding place. Seated amongst these people he felt intuitively that a viewless barrier lay between him and his pursuers, that it was the very last place a man in search of a runaway would glance at.
He was right. Whilst the char-a-banc still lingered on the chance of a last customer, the running policeman—he was walking now, appeared at the sea end of the street. He was a young man with a face like an apple, he wore a straw helmet—Northbourne serves out straw helmets for its police and straw hats for its horses on the first of June each year—and he seemed blown. He was looking about him from right to left, but he never looked once at the char-a-banc and its contents. He went on, and round the corner of the street he vanished, still looking about him.
A few moments later the vehicle started. The contents were cheerful and communicative one with the other, conversing freely on all sorts of matters, and Jones, listening despite himself, gathered all sorts of information on subjects ranging from the pictures then exhibiting at the cinema palace, to the price of butter.
He discovered that the contents consisted of three family parties—exclusive of the honeymoon couple—and that the appearance of universal fraternity was deceptive, that the parties were exclusive, the conversation of each being confined to its own members.
So occupied was his mind by these facts that they were a mile and a half away from Northbourne and in the depths of the country before a great doubt seized him.
He called across the heads of the others to the driver asking where they were going to.