I drove the hearse. Although it looked old-fashioned, there was nothing wrong with its eightcylinder engine. It had a lot of speed, and I let it out on the coast road. A mile or so from the jail I eased up on the accelerator; we drove along at a sedate twenty miles an hour.
As the roof of the jail appeared above the sand-dunes, I saw two policemen standing in the road. They had Thompsons slung over their shoulders; they looked bored, and waved to us to stop.
“You do the talking,” I said to Maxison, out of the corner of my mouth. “This is only a
rehearsal for the real thing. These boys won’t worry us.”
The two cops stood each side of the hearse, peered at us.
“Where are you going?” one of them asked Maxison.
“The jail,” he said curtly, and produced a burial certificate and the court order for the release of the body.
The two cops read the papers and handed them back. I could see by the blank looks on their faces they couldn’t make head nor tail of the legal jargon, but they weren’t suspicious.
“Okay, seems in order,” one of them said importantly. He took a yellow sticker from his pocket and pasted it on the fender of the hearse. “That’ll get you to the gates. No speeding, and stop if you’re signalled.”
“And that means stop,” the other cop said, grinning. “The boys up there are sure itching to use their rods.”