She glanced out of the car as it sped along the streets. She could not, however, make out where they were. All London streets look pretty much alike at night, and there seemed no chance of identifying any particular one in passing through it. Her hope was that the car might be driven too fast. It certainly seemed as if they might well be exceeding the speed limit. If a policeman stopped the driver she felt that it might easily happen that she could utter some protest. And, surely, her captor (for as such she now thought of him) would not dare to stop her from speaking.

This did not happen. It seemed that he must have known precisely what he was doing, and carefully refrained from driving at more than thirty miles an hour in any built-up area.

Once they stopped at a crossing, where the traffic lights were against them, and she moved as if to get out. But her companion gripped her wrist in his fingers. He hissed into her ears: “Stay still!” Almost petrified with fright, she was unable to get free, and helplessly acquiesced in her continued imprisonment—for such, she decided, this really was.

On they sped, the night getting ever blacker, and the rain, which had caused Sergeant Cunningham such trouble in his attempt to find her, coming down in sheets. It struck the windscreen of the car as if with malice aforethought, but splashed off helplessly into the road.

By now they had left the last straggling houses of the outer suburbs of London behind, and were sweeping along a fine, broad road, where many cars passed them, and great lumbering lorries had to be passed in their turn.

“Is this the Great North Road?” she asked, and her companion nodded.

“It is,” he said. “But I warn you: talk no more, or it will be the worse for you.”

She subsided into silence. Clearly this man who had kidnapped her so fearlessly was absolutely without scruple. Obviously he was the murderer, she told herself, and her heart made a wild leap into her mouth at the thought.

At last, however, she thought of a way of leaving, at any rate, some sort of clue behind. It might never be picked up, but it did give her the satisfaction of knowing that she was doing her best to give the police—who would, she hoped, do their best to track this dreadful man to his lair, wherever that might be—some sort of chance of discovering her. So she cautiously opened her handbag, taking out her handkerchief and ostentatiously wiping her nose. Then she pretended to replace it in her bag, but really retained it in the palm of her hand, screwed into a little ball. As they swung around a corner in the road, she leaned towards the window, and gripped the little handle that opened it.