"Pity about that pistol," he muttered.
On the road at his feet lay a lady's hand-bag with silk cords. It was part of the equipment furnished by Mrs. Barraclough. Richard stooped and picked it up. There was a barrel of tar and a sand heap by the sign board and it struck him that both might by useful. With all the speed he could command he rolled the tar barrel up the road and left it blocking the way. Then he returned to the sand heap and filled the hand-bag very full and tightened the strings. It felt quite business like as he spun it in the air.
The noise of the oncoming Ford was now plainly detectable, but with it was another sound, a sound that caused him to throw up his head and listen. From the Oxshott road it came, the tump—tump—tump of a single cylinder motor cycle engine. He knew that music very well, had heard it a score of times during his three weeks' imprisonment. The particular ring of the exhaust could not be mistaken.
"That's Laurence's bike for a thousand pounds," he exclaimed and quickly pulled the hood of the cloak over his head.
To guess at the relative distances, the motor cycle should arrive half a minute before the car and banking on the chance, Richard sat down on the heap of sand and waited.
It was Laurence right enough—in evening dress, and hatless, just as he had sprung to the pursuit after at last they succeeded in breaking down the door.
He saw the wrecked motor and what was apparently an old woman huddled at the roadside. He pulled up within a couple of yards and shouted at her.
"Hi! you Madam! seen a car with a man and a girl in it go by?"
But he received no answer even when he shouted the question a second time. The old lady seemed painfully deaf and employing the most regrettable language, Oliver Laurence descended from his mount, leant it against the fence and came nearer to yell his inquiry into her ear. He did not have time to recover from his surprise, when the voice of Richard Frencham Altar replied: "Yes, I have." The sand-bag descended on the top of his head directed by a full arm swing. A dazzling procession of stars floated before his eyes as though he were plunged into the very heart of the milky-way—flashed and faded into velvet black insensibility.
From behind heralded by a beam of light and the squawk of a horn, came a crash as the Ford Car hit the tar barrel end on. Its front axle went back ten inches and the rear wheels rose upward. Two shadowy forms, that were groundlings at another time, took wings and flew in a neat parabola over the windscreen, striking the metal surface of the road with a single thud. They made no effort to rise, but lay in awkward sprawling attitudes as though in the midst of violent activity they had fallen asleep.