“The driver’s gone,” explained Brett, realising that from the floor she could see nothing. “Can you move your fingers?”

“No. They tied my hands flat out, and the strap goes over the fingers.” She sniffed audibly.

“Something to be said for Daddy’s family saloon, isn’t there,” said Brett.

“I think,” said Majendie, “I can move mine a little—right index and thumb. What do you want?”

“If we can, to shift along the seat and turn back to back, so that you can untie my hands. I think we should get out now, if possible.”

Brett worked himself along till he met Majendie.

“Awkward, dear fellow,” said he. “We can’t turn exactly back to back or we shall fall off, I fear. Wait now—can I reach your hands?”

Brett felt a fingertip brush his left thumb.

“Perhaps if we leaned back,” suggested Majendie. “The angle of separation—”

“Wait!” exclaimed Brett, starting. He was staring all the while out of the window. About a hundred yards away two pairs of headlights had been switched on.

“Stephanie,” he said. “Did you see a third car back there?”

“Not see it, but there was a van, they said so.”

“A van! Only one?”

“What is it?” Majendie was asking. “Shall I go on?”

“Could I bite it?” Stephanie suggested.

“I think it’s too thick, my dear.” Majendie checked his slow feeble plucking. “Do you hear anything?”

Brett listened. The engine of the car thrummed quietly. Above it, literally above it, another and much more powerful noise was making itself heard.

“There is a railway across the marsh,” said Majendie.

Brett shook his head. “That’s not a train.”

“An aeroplane, perhaps. Something from Manston. I should have thought the weather too bad for them to be up. Up, did I say? He seems to be rather unusually low. Not in difficulties, I hope.”

The noise was now indeed ear-shaking, a great spattering roar, as if a titanic coffee mill were grinding coarse.

“That’s not an aeroplane,” shouted Stephanie at the top of her voice, “that’s a helicopter.”

Brett heard Majendie’s excited squeaks. He didn’t listen. If Kent were there—if, if!—they must start to close in now, or they’d miss the best of the bunch. The helicopter could rise in a trice, leaving bystanders staring up like the apostles in a picture of the Ascension.

“Quick,” he breathed, “quick, quick—”

The uproar ceased abruptly. The sound of their own engine was, in comparison, scarcely noticeable. Brett blinked. The helicopter, gently clumsy, had lowered itself into the beams of the headlights. For a moment or two it hovered and shifted sideways, rotors still whirring, like a huge out-of-season dragonfly quivering over a pond. Then it settled. Immediately the headlights were switched off.

“Has it crashed?” Stephanie sounded frightened.

“No, landed,” said Majendie, who had abandoned his attempt to free Brett, and was himself gazing out of the window. “Inconsiderate, dear fellow, eh? to turn off the lights at this point—good God! A Verey light!”