It was not a lucky drive since it included three punctures and some engine trouble. They came into Windsor about 7.30 in the morning. Cranbourne made a hurried breakfast and set out to interview the photographers of the town. The particular one he sought did not arrive until nearly nine but on being questioned proved himself amiable and anxious to help. He produced Eton school groups of fifteen years antiquity and Cranbourne spent an hour anxiously scanning the faces of the boys in the hope of tracing a likeness to Barraclough. But boys are very much alike and very dissimilar from the men they grow into and though there were several dozen who might well have passed for Barraclough in infancy no particular one could have been selected with positive assurance. Cranbourne made a list of twenty names and Frencham Altar's was not among them.
Rather despondent he said goodbye to the photographer and entered the taxi.
"Think I'll go back by the Bath Road," said the driver, "it's a better surface."
"Please yourself," said Cranbourne and settled himself within.
He was beginning to feel a trifle done. His eyes had the sense of having been sand papered and his lips were dry and parched from want of rest. He glanced at his watch and shook his head.
"Only thirteen hours left," he said and closed his eyes.
Sleep comes very suddenly to the weary—like a pistol shot out of the dark. Cranbourne's head pitched forward against his chest and his hands slithered inertly from his knees.
He awoke with a start to the sound of smashing glass, a sharp rattle of imprecations and a sense of being turned upside down. The front nearside wheel of the taxi was in a ditch, the wind screen broken and a large dray horse was trying to put its fore hoof through the buckled bonnet. The taxi driver had fallen out and lay cursing gently on the grass slope to the left, one of his legs was up to the knee in water. Through the offside window Cranbourne caught a glimpse of the man in charge of the dray horses—a powerful person, high perched, his weight thrown bask against the tightened reins—his face purple with effort. From his mouth came an admirable flow of oaths, choicely adjusted to suit the occasion. Then Cranbourne saw something else. Beneath the man's vibrating jaw showed the pleasant colours of an Old Etonian tie. There could be no mistaking it—neither could there be any reason why the driver of a Covent Garden dray should exhibit such an ensign.
Cranbourne let the window down with a bang, stuck out his head and shouted,
"Where the devil did you get that tie?"