Lights began to dot the roadside. Widely spaced at first, unbroken ranks
were soon streaking past the tear-blind windows. Outskirts of London were
being traversed; but neither driving sheets of rain against which human
vision failed, nor the chance of encountering belated traffic, worked any
slackening of the pace. Only when a corner had to be negotiated did the car
slow down, and then never to the point of sanity; and the turn once
rounded, its flight would again become headlong, lunatic, suicidal.
The stringed lamps wove a wavering luminous ribbon without end; a breeze
laden with the wet fragrance of London drove great gusts of rain in
stringing showers through the broken window. Turns and twists grew more
frequent, apparently favouring the pursuit.
Victor now knelt constantly on the back seat, his face in the fitful play
of light and shadow uncannily resembling that of a hunted jungle cat. On
the polished steel of his pistol sinister gleams winked and faded. From his
snarling lips foul oaths fell, a steady stream, black blasphemies spewed up
from the darkest dives of the Orient--most of them happily couched in the
tongues of their origin and so unintelligible to his one auditor. As it
was, she heard and understood enough, too much.
Nevertheless, the man was not too completely absorbed in watching the
shifting fortunes of the race to be unmindful of the girl. And when once
she sat up to ease cramped limbs, he misread her intention and, catching
her viciously by an arm, threw her back into her corner and advised her not
to play the giddy little fool.
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