Nausea rushed out of his nightmare to seize him. “I’m going to be sick,” he said, weakly. He was still dragged backwards. “Stop,” he gasped, “I mean it.”

Someone, with last minute speed and humanity, rolled him face down in the snow, lifted his shoulders and held his head. Everything flew from his consciousness except the horrors of vomiting. It was so long since he had been overwhelmed by them that he had forgotten how even without pain and without danger that most distressing upheaval prostrated the sufferer. There was nothing left to him but his sickness. While it lasted, life faded, time was suspended, yet an end was inconceivable. But of course it did end; and as the spasms abated the first of his returning perceptions was of a pain insistently chiselling into the back of his head. Sight, hearing, and touch came back in confusion. All he wanted was to lie down and be left alone in the dark. Shuddering, he turned his head, seeking somewhere to lean it. He found someone’s arm, and let it lie on that.

He was rolled back, propped against someone’s knees. Whoever it was, they had a clean handkerchief with which they wiped his mouth and let him blow his nose.

“Give us,” said a man.

After a moment’s fumbling, someone passed the scent of brandy near Brett’s nostrils. Feebly, he shook his head. “Water,” he whispered.

There was a short silence.

“Here,” said the same voice.

Brett felt a cold substance held to his lips. He opened them, and received a rather clumsily administered mouthful of snow. After the first surprise and the first convulsive shiver had passed, he let it melt gratefully down his throat.

“Duster come down too rough,” muttered the voice.

“He didn’t know who it was.”

“Come down too rough all the same. Here.”

Brett was offered, and took, a second mouthful of snow.

“You’ll make a bloody Niagara of this,” went on the first voice. “Can’t you see they’re sniffing round us? Why not sling while you can?”

“Must be a coincidence. The police wouldn’t be so stupid.”

“You don’t know them like I do. You don’t know just how stupid they can be,” said the first, morosely. “Here, have a drop of this now.”

This time Brett did not refuse the brandy; which was, however, withdrawn so quickly that he swallowed only once.

“What are you doing?” demanded a third voice. “What the hell are you doing? I said get him in.”

It was not until the newcomer spoke that Brett fully awoke to the contrast which existed between voices one and two. Voice one spoke in a low rapid mutter with which years of duty had made Brett familiar. Voice two, and now voice three, proclaimed without fault a middle-class origin and environment. For the pinched speech of the newcomer, moreover, Brett felt a dim recognition.

“Stan here thinks the police are stupid,” said two, “and he’s nursing this one like a mother. Yet he’s breezy because he thinks they’re on our tail.”