'This censorship of yours is a bluff, I suppose,' he muttered.
'Amongst many other positions,' Major Elwell admitted, 'I also hold a somewhat important place in the English Secret Service. You have, I trust, one of the first qualifications for useful service in your profession--you are able to recognize the inevitable? You are face to face with it now.'
There was a brief silence. Johnson was standing at the window with his hands behind him. Presently he turned around.
'Very well,' he pronounced curtly, 'you've got me fairly enough. Go ahead.'
'You see,' Major Elwell explained, 'you might, under the present laws, be treated as an ordinary indiscreet traveller--or as a spy. Better hand over everything you are carrying.'
Johnson opened his coat pocket and threw a few letters and a pocket-book upon the table. Major Elwell glanced them through and sighed. Then he turned towards Suzanne.
'If you would give us a couple of minutes, please,' he begged.
Lavendale led her out into the yard. In a few minutes the door behind them was thrown open. The Major was standing at the top of the steps.
'Where's the car?' he shouted--'the car they came in?'
Lavendale looked down the yard and dashed into the street.
'Where's the other car?' he asked one of the soldiers on guard.
'No instructions to detain it, sir,' the man replied. 'The chauffeur drove it to the garage to fill up with petrol.'
They ran across the street in a little procession. The man in charge of the place stared at them, a little dazed.
'Car came in about ten minutes ago--a great Delauney-Belleville,' he informed them. 'She filled up and started off for London.'
Major Elwell turned towards Lavendale and laughed hardly.
'That fellow's first job, he muttered, 'and he's done us in! The documents he was carrying are in that car!'
Major Elwell spent the next hour in the telegraph office whilst Lavendale and Suzanne raced southwards. More than once they had news of the car of which they were in pursuit. At Brandon it was only twenty minutes ahead, and at Newmarket they learnt that the driver had called at the station, found there was no train for an hour and continued his journey. From Newmarket, through Six-Mile-Bottom and onwards, they touched seventy miles an hour, and even Suzanne shivered a little in her seat. At the Royston turn the sparks flew upwards through the grey light as Lavendale's brakes bit their way home.