It might have been the work of an ordinary petrol thief, but she could not help chuckling at the thought of a baffled enemy waiting to waylay her somewhere along the stretch of lonely highway beyond the Cirencester crossroads, and she was still conjuring up a picture of the scene when George, who had his own methods of persuading garage hands into action, came back with two young men in overalls and four gallons of petrol in cans.

Mrs Bradley did her part by rewarding them handsomely for their trouble. There was general agreement that the tank did not leak, and George, who had been informed by Henri of a cat-burglar whom his employer had deliberately shielded, took no chances, but drove Mrs Bradley into Stanway, and almost to Beckford before turning south through Bishops Cleeve for Cheltenham.

‘And now for Mr Emming,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘for it is our duty to protect the general public.’

Once out of Cheltenham George hurried. But nothing untoward happened. Mrs Bradley and her man were hungry, but as soon as they reached the manor house, where Jonathan and Deborah were awaiting them, Mrs Bradley merely popped her head out of the car, greeted them, intimated that she would soon be back, and George drove on up the village street and stopped at Emming’s lodgings.

The carpenter and his wife were in bed. Mrs Bradley knew this from the absence of lights. She did not leave her car. She sat and waited. Emming turned up on a motorcycle two hours later.

George closed in on one side and Mrs Bradley on the other as he dismounted.

‘Well, and how did you find Oxford looking, cully?’ George enquired, in the over-familiar accents of insobriety. Emming, who, in the darkness, had not noticed Mrs Bradley, drew away from George and said nervously:

‘You go to bed, old boy! Just you go off to bed.’

‘You were in Oxford,’ said George thickly. ‘You siphoned my petrol.’ Emming shoved him off.

‘You be damned for a liar!’ he said. ‘Of course I haven’t been in Oxford. Get out of here and go home!’

‘So that’s two of you,’ said Jonathan soberly, when he had heard the story of Tiny’s exploit on the balcony. ‘You twice, and——’

‘Two of us? Not Ed Brown?’

‘What made you think of Ed? No, it was the gamekeeper, Will North, who nearly caught it. Lucky for him he’s an observant, cautious sort of bloke, otherwise he might have had his head blown off.’