Once Amberley bade him take the map over a difficult piece of country and guide him to some village the sergeant had never heard of. The sergeant ventured to ask where they were going. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the roar of the engine. He saw Amberley give a shrug, and managed to catch the word, "Littlehaven." It conveyed nothing to the sergeant. As the Bentley rocked over a stretch of lane pitted with holes he said: "If you're sure where he's gone, sir, why don't you take the main road?"
"Because I'm not sure, damn you!" said Mr. Amberley. "It's the best I can do."
The sergeant relapsed into silence. Except for the discomfort of travelling at a shocking pace over bad roads he was not sure that he wasn't glad they had chosen deserted lanes. At least they ran less risk of an accident. He shuddered to think what might happen on a main road. As it was he spent most of his time clutching at the door to steady himself, and although his nerves were becoming dulled, he had several bad frights. Once when a bicyclist wobbled into the middle of the road and the Bentley's wheels tore at the loose surface as it took a sudden swerve round the unwary cyclist, he was moved to shout: "People like you, Mr. Amberley, didn't ought to be allowed anything more powerful than a Ford!"
He had thought it a still night, but the wind whistled east his ears and once nearly swept his helmet off. He jammed it on more firmly and thought Mr. Amberley must be fairly scared out of his senses to treat his car in this frightful fashion.
The moon had come up and was riding serenely overhead, occasionally obscured by a drifting cloud. The country through which they were travelling was unfamiliar to the sergeant. He retained ever afterwards the memory of untarred roads with puddles gleaming in the moonlight, of hedges flashing past, of villages where warm lamps glowed behind uncurtained windows, and of signposts stretching cracked arms to point the way to unknown hamlets; of hills up which the Bentley stormed, of sudden sickening lurches as the car took a bad corner, of the electric horn insistently blaring at slower-going vehicles, forcing them to draw in to the side; and above all of Mr. Amberley's face beside him, with the eyes never wavering from the road ahead and the mouth compressed in a hard, merciless line.
He ceased to peer nervously ahead in search of danger. Amberley never paid any attention to his warnings but drove on and on, very expertly, the sergeant had no doubt, but quite scandalously. The sergeant wondered in a detached way what his own position would be if they ran into or over something.
Hurtling along at over fifty miles an hour, and him a police officer! Nice set-out it would be if they went and killed somebody.
At the level-crossing, where they halted for the gates to be opened, they picked the trail up again, and even the battered sergeant felt that the speed had been justified when he heard that the Vauxhall had passed over no more than twenty minutes earlier.
Mr. Amberley's bleak look lightened. As he drove over the lines and changed up, he said: "I was right. We're going to shift a bit now, Sergeant."
"Well, I'll thank you to remember that this ain't Daytona Beach, sir," said the long-suffering sergeant. "Far from it. Now be careful of the bus, for Gawd's sake, Mr. Amberley!"
A country bus was grumbling along ahead, on the crown of the road. Mr. Amberley kept his hand on the hooter, but the bus meandered along unheeding. The Bentley charged past, mounting the tufty grass that bordered the lane and clearing the omnibus by inches.
The sergeant, clinging to the door, hung out to hurl invectives at the bus-driver, already out of earshot. A swerve round a bend brought him round with a bump. He mopped his face with a large handkerchief and said that what they seemed to want was a blooming tank, not a motorcar.
Chapter Eighteen
Littlehaven was a fishing village situated on the marshy alluviums where a small river emptied itself into the sea at the head of a creek, running about a mile inland. The village itself was old, with twisted streets smelling of seaweed and of tar. It had a small harbour, where the smacks rode at anchor, and over the beach were always to be found black nets, redolent of fish scales, spread out for mending. Westward along the coast, towards the mouth of the creek, a modern bungalow town had sprung up, for the place provided good boating and fishing, and in the season the sea was alive with small craft; and the one hotel, a gaunt structure towering above the one-storied houses, was so full that it could afford to charge extremely high prices for most inferior accommodation. Out of season half of it was shut up and the bungalows presented an equally deserted appearance. Most of them were owned by enterprising tradesmen who furnished them for the purpose of letting them at exorbitant rents for three months of the year and were content to allow them to stand empty for the remaining nine months.
Along the coast on the other side of the creek were a few better-built bungalows standing grandly apart. These were the privately owned houses, disdaining to rub shoulders with their humbler neighbours, even holding themselves discreetly aloof from each other. They boasted quite large gardens, and were served by a road from the town of Lowchester, some ten miles inland.
On the Littlehaven side of the creek the bungalows grew less and less pretentious till they petered outt altogether; at the creek mouth a few fishermen's cottages huddled together round a Martello tower.
When the Bentley tore through Littlehaven Mr. Amberley did not stop to inquire for the Vauxhall, but jolted over the cobbled streets till he met the coast road. This had a tarred surface, and the car, badly hampered by the cobbles, leaped forward again and ran beside a depressing asphalt sea-walk, with the beach and the moonlit sea beyond, and a row of red and white bungalows on the other side of it.
From the level-crossing onwards Amberley had met with bad luck. Once the road was up and the signals had been against him; he had lost time waiting for a horse and wagon to crawl slowly over the narrow causeway; once, in a town of some size, he had been held up at every crossing and still further detained by the efforts of a blandly unconcerned female to turn a large Humber in a narrow road. She blocked the way for several precious minutes, twice stopping her engine, and looked stonily indignant when Amberley put his thumb on his electric hooter and kept it there. The sergeant's heart jumped into his mouth when, long before the female had completed her turn, the Bentley glided forward, mounted the pavement and almost brushed past the other car still, as it were, spreadeagled across the path.
But in spite of this ruthless manoeuvre time had been lost, and glancing at his watch Amberley doubted whether he had lessened the distance between the Bentley and the Vauxhall.
The sergeant, when he saw the sea with the moonlight on the water, was moved to remark that it looked pretty. He got no answer. "Where are we going to, sir?" he inquired.
"There's a creek," Amberley replied briefly. "We're almost on to it. On the opposite side, set back about four or five hundred yards from the seacoast, there is a bungalow. That's where we're going."
"We are, are we?" said the sergeant. "I suppose we just drive across the creek. Or swim."
"We shall go across in a boat," replied Amberley.
"Well, I'd as soon have gone round by road, sir," said the sergeant. "I never was a good sailor, and I don't suppose I ever shall be. What's more, I haven't got any fancy to have you driving me about in a motorboat, and that's the truth. Besides," he added, as a thought struck him, "how are you going to come by a motorboat at this hour?"