Slymne, passing on the other side of the street, did not linger but went into the first clothing shop he could find and emerged wearing a beret and the blue jacket he supposed would make him look like a typical French peasant. For the rest of the day Slymne lurked round corners, in cafés that commanded a view of the hotel, in shop doorways even further down the street, but Glodstone put in no appearance.
He was in fact faced with almost the same dilemma as Slymne. Having driven for twenty-four hours without sleep, he was exhausted and his digestion had taken a pounding from rather too many champignons with his steak the night before. In short, he was in no condition to do any sightseeing and was having second thoughts about La Comtesse's letter. 'Clearly the swine forced her to write it,' he told Peregrine,' and yet how did they know we would be staying at Ivry-La-Bataille?'
'Probably tortured her until she told them,' said Peregrine. 'I mean, they're capable of anything.'
'But she is not,' said Glodstone, refusing to believe that even a helpless heroine, and a Comtesse at that, would give in to the most fiendish torture. 'There's a message for us here if we could read it.'
Peregrine looked at the letter again. 'But we've already read it. It says...'
'I know what it seems to say,' snapped Glodstone, 'What I want to know is what it's trying to tell us.'
'To go back to England and if we don't she'll be '
'Bill, old chap,' interrupted Glodstone through clenched teeth, 'what you don't seem to be able to get into that thick head of yours is that things are seldom what they appear to be. For instance, look at her handwriting.'
'Doesn't look bad to me,' said Peregrine, 'it's a bit shaky but if you've just been tortured it would be, wouldn't it? I mean if they used thumbscrews or red-hot pokers '
'Dear God,' said Glodstone, 'what I'm trying to tell you is that La Comtesse may have written in a trembling hand with the intention of telling us she is still in trouble.'
'Yes,' said Peregrine, 'and she is, isn't she? They're going to kill her if we don't go back to Dover. She says that.'
'But does she mean it? And don't say...Yes...Well, never mind. She wrote that letter under duress. I'm sure of it. More, if they could murder her with impunity, why haven't they done so already. Something else is different. In all her previous messages, La Comtesse has told me to burn the letter but here she doesn't. And there's our cue. She means us to go on. We're going to draw their fire. We'll leave as soon as it's dark and take the road we would have gone if we'd never read this letter.'
Glodstone got up and went down the corridor to the bathroom with a box of matches. He returned to the room with a fresh wave of euphoria seething up inside him to find Peregrine staring out of the window.
'I say, Patton,' he whispered, 'I'm sure we're being watched. There's a Frenchie on the corner and I swear I've seen him before somewhere.'
'Where?' asked Glodstone peering down into the street.
'I don't know. He just looks like someone I know.'
'I don't mean that,' said Glodstone, 'I mean where is he now?'
'He's gone,' said Peregrine, 'but he's been hanging about all day.'
'Good,' said Glodstone with a nasty smile. 'Two can play that game. Tonight we'll be followed and so we'll go armed. I'd like to hear what our watcher has to tell us. And let me know if you spot him again.'
But Slymne did not put in another appearance. He had had an appalling day and his feeling about thriller-writers was particularly violent. The sods ought to try their hands at skulking about French towns pretending to be peasants and attempting to keep a watch on a hotel before they wrote so glibly about such things. His feet were sore, the pavements hard, the weather was foully hot and he had drunk more cups of black coffee than were good for his nervous system. He had also been moved on by several shopkeepers who objected to being stared at for half an hour at a time by a shifty man wearing dark glasses and a beret. He'd also had the problem of avoiding the street outside the hotel and this meant that he had to walk down a back-alley, along another street and up a third to vary the corners from which he watched. All in all Slymne made a rough calculation that he must have trudged fifteen miles during the course of the day. And for all his pains he had learnt nothing except that Glodstone hadn't left the hotel, or if he had, he hadn't used the Bentley.
And it was the Bentley that most interested Slymne. As he wandered the streets or stared so menacingly into shop windows his mind, hyped by too much caffeine, tried to devise ways of following the car without keeping it in sight. In books it was quite simple. Reality was something else again. So were boys. On the other hand if he could only bring the Bentley to a halt in some lonely spot Glodstone would have to leave the car and go for help. Slymne remembered the time when an enterprising fourteen-year-old at Groxbourne had stuffed a potato up the exhaust pipe of the Art master's car to such good effect that the man had had to have it towed away and the engine stripped before anyone had found out what was wrong. And there had been talk of another master's car which had been wrecked before the War by adding sugar to it petrol tank. Inspired by these memories, Slymne went into a café and ordered a calvados. Under its influence, and that of a second, he reversed his order of priorities. If Glodstone started south again Slymne could stay ahead of him by sticking to the main roads. Bu not in the Cortina. One glimpse of its number plate would give the game away.
Slymne left the café in search of a garage where he could hire car. Having found one, he moved his luggage from the Cortina to Citroën, bought two kilos of sugar, another kilo of nails, several large cans of oil at different garages, and parked near the hotel. If Glodstone left that night, he was in for a nasty surprise. Wearily he looked at his watch. It was nine o'clock. He would give Glodstone until midnight. But at ten-thirty the Bentley's bonnet poked cautiously from the garage, paused for a moment and then swung south. Slymne let it go and when it had turned the corner started the car and moved after it. Five minutes later he watched it turn onto the Anet road. Slymne put his foot down, doing ninety on the N183, and before Glodstone could have entered the Forêt de Dreux, the Citroën was six kilometres ahead of him.
Chapter 11
In the event, he need not have hurried. Glodstone was taking his time. Twice he had turned down side roads and switched off his lights.
'Because,' he said, 'I want to give them a chance to go by. They've been waiting to see what we're going to do and they'll follow. But they won't know which road we've taken and they'll have to look.'
'Yes, but when they don't find us, won't they watch the roads ahead?' asked Peregrine who was enjoying himself unstrapping the revolvers from their hiding places beneath the seats.
Glodstone shook his head. 'They may later on, but for the moment they'll assume we're travelling fast. I mean they would if they were in our shoes. But we'll move slowly. And France is a big country. If we lose them here they'll have a thousand roads to search much further south. And here, I think, they come.'
'How do you know?' whispered Peregrine as a Jaguar shot past the side road. Glodstone started the Bentley.
'Because French headlights are yellow and those were white,' he said, 'and if I'm not mistaken, our Englishman at Calais is the link man. He's probably above suspicion too. Some wealthy member of the Bar whose Club is White's and who moves in the best circles. Now a Jag may be a shade too flashy in London but it'll do very well in France for speed.'