CHAPTER XVI COUNSEL OF PERFECTION
Lead such temptations by the head and hair,
Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight,
That so he may do battle and have praise.
The Ring and the Book.
Gardiner was just one second too late. As he reached the back door the police arrived at the front; and they saw him. The Wrotham man, who had known him as a wicked small boy, raised a sort of view-hallo and dashed into the hall in pursuit. But Tom's broad figure was in the way (not obstructing the police, oh dear, no, nothing further from his mind, just solidly, immovably stupid!); and while Cotterill dodged round him, Gardiner had time to slip through the back door, slam it and turn the key in his pursuer's face.
He was not one of those unready mortals who are flustered by a sudden strain. On the contrary, it braced him. He dragged Tom's bicycle out of the shed, and ran it up the kitchen garden to the gate which led into the glebe; then across the meadow, the mild cows shying and backing with lowered heads as he rushed by to a second gate, giving on the road. Nobody in sight yet, the coast still clear. He heaved his machine over the bars, vaulted them himself and rode for his life.
Woodlands stands at the end of a trident of lanes, whose left arm points towards Otford, its right towards Kingsdown, while the shank leads northwards through Farningham to Dartford. Any one would naturally conclude that a fugitive would choose this last road, which for its first four miles is utterly lonely. Gardiner turned to the right, by the lane which climbs through woods, with many a twist, to join the London road at Kingsdown. How he pedalled up that hill! But after all, as he told himself, breathless, the gradients were the same for them as for him; and if he was hampered by a strange bicycle, Cotterill was portly.
Level ground at last, and the Portobello inn at the crossroads where the lane cuts the highway. Here the fugitive fell in with the great stream of motorists and cyclists who frequent this road for the pleasure of spinning down Wrotham Hill in one direction, Farningham Hill in the other. On the Dartford road he would have been conspicuous to every one he met; here he was a unit in the crowd. He turned towards London. Down into Farningham, over the bridge, with its magnificent horse chestnut leaning to the Darenth, a tower of gold on a field of emerald; up the opposite slope to Swanley Junction; on through the Crays to Sidcup, where the suburbs begin, shades of the prison-house; and finally, London itself.
On Vauxhall Bridge he halted, to consider his course. It was unlucky, most unlucky that Cotterill had seen him; his description would be all over the country to-morrow. The first thing was to get money. He must borrow; but from whom? Denis was at Bredon, his other male friends were in the ends of the earth. Yet he knew without hesitation where to go. It occurred to him to wonder, as he asked his way of the policeman outside Vauxhall station, what Tom would have said to the idea of borrowing from a girl.