Then, thanking the motor cyclist for his information, the car was backed and turned, and soon they were tearing through the gathering darkness down a long, winding valley which echoed to the roar of their engine and the constant hoot of their horn.
Steep and dangerous was the road in many places, with a loose surface and a number of sharp turns. The drive was a wild one, but if Flobecq was to be intercepted before he caught the night express for the frontier they would have to drive madly.
The beetle-browed chauffeur of Orvieto drove as he had never driven before, though Italians are noteworthy as dare-devil drivers. They passed through Pitigliano—where the cyclist had met the fugitive—and on again into the wild, dark mountains to Manciano, a remote place in the midst of high, barren precipices. Then, after a steep descent, they at last, after nearly two and a half hours, met a drover who confirmed the cyclist, and said that a motor without lights had gone past long ago, after nearly running him down.
The chase was, indeed, exciting.
The Englishman and his companion sat in the car full of eager anxiety. Once Flobecq gained the train at its stopping-place, Orbetello—that quaint old town on the Mediterranean shore—then he would escape, as without a warrant he could not be detained.
So they urged on the chauffeur, who now drove with all the nerve and daring he possessed. The night became thick and black with those dark, low clouds which in spring in Italy are so frequent, and herald a thunderstorm.
The storm came at last, just about eleven. The lightning flashed and the thunder rolled, echoing and reverberating along the valley where the road ran beside the rushing torrent on its way to the sea.
Then, after four hours of the most exciting drive that either man had experienced, they came to the junction of the Albegna River, and then out upon a broad road across a plain, straight toward the open sea.
After a further eighteen miles or so, a red light showed suddenly—the light of a level railway crossing. They had at last gained the main line which runs by the Maremme from Rome to Pisa—the main line to Genoa and Turin.
Passing the crossing, the gates closed behind them with a clang almost immediately, and then, the road ran parallel with the railway for many miles towards ancient Orbetello with its ponderous walls and the sea.