“And the other two? Perfect gentlemen? I think you said Geoffrey pointed the gun. Look! We’re turning off A2. Do you know where we are?”

“Let me see—we joined the road when that fellow left us, just past Barton, you know, my own home. We’ve turned north-east—towards Adisham, would it be, I wonder, or the next road up—”

North-east. Brett felt an incredulous flutter of hope; that after all his disappointment and despair he was being carried to no other place than Richborough. He recalled the arguments in the Palladian love glade. Wacey guessed, scented trouble with a professional keenness. The others, overconfident, were sailing ahead. Admittedly, they were the Hampstead people, who had pulled off two robberies important enough to boost anyone’s confidence. But clever as they were they lacked both the cautionary sense developed by long practice and the inside tricks which distinguish professional polish from amateur zeal. The instinct of the professional underworld on meeting a policeman, in Brett’s experience, was to slip quietly away; and if the worst came to the worst, and they laid him out, to pelt off at full speed, leaving him to recover as best he might; certainly not to encumber themselves with him.

Public perishing school! The vindictiveness of Wacey’s words lingered. These people were not only new but foreign, not of the pure criminal stock, outsiders. Was that why information had at first been so difficult, and why Pink, at last, had informed with such obvious relish?

“Do you think,” said Majendie suddenly, and hesitantly, “that there’s any question of—a threat to life?”

“Probably not to mine,” said Brett callously. “It’s a deadly sin to kill a policeman, and even they know the wages of sin.”

“But that unfortunate child?”

“I doubt—” Brett stopped. He had summed up his whole thought on Stephanie. “As for you,” he went on, “well—you should know your chances. What have you done to deserve it?”

“Done? But I’ve done nothing, nothing!”

“Then why did you cut the price of my cameo?”

The question flew out of his mouth like a bird; and was succeeded by a silence.

“Look here, dear old fellow,” Majendie eventually whispered in a very nervous voice. “Difficult, I know, in the circumstances—medical attention—but take my advice—lie back—relax, you know—try to keep calm—”

“Come off it!” Brett, furious, felt the brazen tongue of Beddoes leap into action in his own mouth. “Stop pouring out that padded cell syrup. I’m absolutely ice cold sane. Did you or did you not tell that pomaded monkey to soften me up with a slice off whatever I wanted?”

“Good God, sir!” hissed Majendie, evidently stung out of his concern. “If by that offensive term you mean Mr. Emmanuel, certainly not.”

“In your position, why not speak the truth?”

“Do you have the effrontery,” cried Majendie, his voice swelling in outrage, “to mistrust my word to my face.”

“I trust no one,” said Brett.

“Indeed, I imagine suspicion and cynicism, if not congenital, are soon ingrained in a policeman. A sort of occupational disease.”