“All right,” said Brett, “I’ll take a chance.”

“What on?”

Your honesty, he said to himself. “That the case wasn’t filled with toffee apples. Did Majendie open it in the taxi?”

“No. Oh—have you been following us?”

“He didn’t have a duplicate in the car, and change it?” he went on, ignoring her dismay.

“No.”

“All right. Majendie told you to make for the nearest police. You know where that is? Not Pettinge?”

“No, the other way, back on the main road. There’s a policeman’s house. He could phone—”

“Yes, yes. We’ll make for it. Here comes more snow, so we’d better hurry.”

“Please—switch off,” she pleaded, “it makes it so easy for someone to see us.”

“But without a light we’ll probably land in the ditch as my car did. At least, it isn’t mine, it’s the property of Kent County Constabulary.”

“But what—what? You haven’t smashed it? Have we got to walk?”

“I’m afraid so,” he said firmly, moving towards the gap.

“No,” she cried. “Behind the hedge.”

He shook his head. “Too difficult. We want to find this policeman as fast as we can. Besides if someone did come along looking for you the hedge wouldn’t give very good cover. I saw you, and I wasn’t searching. We might as well use the road.”

He held out his arm, which she ignored; but she moved forward. They crossed the ditch and turned right.

“There’s a short cut,” she said.

“In this snow, this visibility? No.”

“But it’s a proper road, a lane, the first on the right. It cuts off the wood corner and takes you out nearer the village on the main road. I’ve been along it in my uncle’s car.”

“All right. We’ll risk it, when we come to it.”

“Risk?”

“Only in the sense that a short cut is always a risk.”

“But if you were behind us all the way from Folkestone,” she said after a pause, “were you chasing us or the others?”

“I wasn’t chasing, I was following Majendie.”

“But why? To look after him, or something?”

“Purely from curiosity,” he said, not caring to add that this particular bit of curiosity had first been roused by what she’d told him on the previous night.

Suddenly she stopped, and caught his arm.

“There’s a car coming,” she whispered, anguished.

He stood still. The snow, once again driving hard, pattered against his ears as he strained them for the sound of an engine.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “We’ll carry on.”

She didn’t release his arm, although they were now almost running.

“If they did come along before we could get off this road,” she panted, “what would we do? Are they—are they dangerous?”

“Perhaps to Majendie.”

She uttered a cry of distress. “And he made me run away. I do feel awful.”

“Spare yourself,” said Brett drily. “He made you run away with the best part of the danger.”

“What?”

“The case.”

“That?” Her voice squeaked in her astonishment. “What’s in it? Not something that might blow up?”