The big car edged uncomfortably close to the ditch as Charles eased it round; he was well on the wrong side of the road, and the camber was dragging the wheels sideways. Never mind! His first run was nearly over, and he had kept up with the convoy. Not that it had been easy; altogether a job for the new Charles, though the old one had learnt to drive sufficiently well to take his mother shopping in the family ten-horsepower saloon. Just a question of being able to climb into the driving seat of his first ‘job’, and drive it away without too much clashing of the gears—and then the grim struggle to keep the rest of the convoy in sight, to prove that he could do what they could do. If Scrodd could see him now!

They would soon be in Liverpool; the road was lined with houses, and suddenly the five cars ahead stopped. A pedestrian crossing with a crocodile of school children on it. He brought the car to a halt and waited, keeping the clutch out; it was hard, the pedal was new and stiff. As he sat quietly waiting, his mind strove to grasp the swirl of recent events. What a time it had been! How little he had understood of what had gone on! He had felt like Alice in Wonderland. From the moment when, over their drinks (ironically, in the Oak Lounge), the gangling man had introduced himself as Teddy Bunder and announced his intention of ‘squeezing you into the racket, old boy—you’re the type’, he had felt like a spark whirled up from a fire in a current of hot air. At first he had suspected that Bunder was a crook, and that the gang of cronies to whom Bunder had introduced him when they arrived at the Export Express staff canteen and bar were crooks too. They all seemed keen on recruiting the profession from among those who were ‘the type’; presumably Ern had been the type, and Ern was now engaged in being the type behind bars for eighteen months. And yet, once Bunder had levered him adroitly into the firm, taking him straight in to the manager with the claim that he had found the ideal man to fill a vacancy that had recently occurred, and inventing on the spot a long record of experience for him, Charles found himself left fairly well alone. No one tried to interest him in dubious schemes; Bunder and his set, though approachable enough, made no effort to sweep him in as one of themselves; for his first job he had been assigned not to a solo trip but to one of the less responsible convoy runs.