“This way.” The sleek man led him down a bare hall and showed him into a room at the back. “Do sit down, Mr. Fortune. But I’m afraid you won’t see Dr. Jerdan.” He slid out. Reggie heard the key turn in the lock. He glanced at the window. That was barred.
“Quite so,” said Reggie. “Now how long will Bell wait?”
He took his stand so that he would be behind the door if it were opened, and listened. There was a scurry of feet and some other sound. The feet fell silent, the other sound became a steady tapping. “Good God, are they nailing him down?” he muttered, took up a chair and dashed it at the lock again and again. As he broke out he heard the beat of a motor engine.
Superintendent Bell drawing near saw a car with two men up come out of the coach-house of the Ferns. He ran into the road and stood in its way. It drove straight at him, gathering speed. He made a jump for the footboard, and being a heavy man missed. The car shot by.
The respectability of Chatham Park Road then heard such a stream of swearing as never had flowed that way. For Sam has a mother’s love of his best car. But he was heroic. He swung its long body out across the road, swearing, but nevertheless. The fugitives from the Ferns took a chance which was no chance. Their car mounted the pavement, hit a gate-post and crashed.
Superintendent Bell arrived to find Sam backing his own car to the kerb while he looked complacently at its shining sides. “Not a scratch, praise God,” he said.
Superintendent Bell pulled up. “You’re a wonder, you are,” he said, and gazed at the ruins. The smashed car was on its side in a jumble of twisted iron and bricks. The driver was underneath. They could not move him. There were reasons why that did not matter to him. “He’s got his,” said Sam. “Where’s the other? There were two of them.”
The other lay half hidden in a laurel hedge. He had been flung out, he had broken the railings with his head, he had broken the stone below, but his head was a gruesome shape.
In the hall of the Ferns Reggie Fortune stood still to listen. That muffled tapping was the only sound in the house. It came from below. He went down dark stairs into the kitchen. No one was there. The sound came from behind a doorway in the corner. He flung it open and looked down into the blackness of a cellar. He struck a light and saw a bundle lying on the ground, a bundle from which stuck out two feet that tapped at the cellar steps. He brought it up to the kitchen. It was a woman with her head and body in a sack. When he had cut her loose he saw the dark face of the woman of the shop and the flat. She sprang at him and grasped his arms.