It occurs to me that, since she played nearly as useful a part in my adventures as did my human colleagues, I should perhaps devote a moment to describing my black Jaguar. I had bought her late in 1937 for a matter of some four hundred pounds, and except for the war years, which she waited out in a barn near my home in Coventry, we had been inseparable ever since. She was one of the mighty Standard Swallow 100s, with a wonderfully reliable three-and-a-half-liter engine, and as I've said, I once clocked her at a hundred and fourteen m.p.h. and believed she could do more. She would go from a standstill to eighty m.p.h. in a matter of twenty-seconds, for her acceleration was ferocious. Yet she was the smoothest-riding jade I ever owned. Her brown leather upholstery had faded through the years to a rich old tan, but her heart was as young as ever. I had lavished on her the affection that might more properly have gone to a wife or a kennel of hounds; in my lonely careering about the countryside in these last days she had amply repaid me. She had been companion and steed and confidante to a very homesick man.
It was a clear day, with a promise of sultry heat to come that prickled my body with sweat under the old tweed suit. I tramped briskly along, thinking of Marion--I thought of her whenever I could, for her sweet face shut out the menacing usurpers from my mind--until I came in sight of the wrecked building. As I swung down the hill toward it, I heard voices raised in argument.
Cautiously I slowed a little, looking nonchalant and disinterested. I walked past the ruin and from the corner of my eye saw a number of men (and monsters) clustered around the Jaguar looking at her curiously. "Aye," said one of them, "that's his, right enough. Black Jaggiar, it says here on the prints." Two of them were constables. I ambled over.
Now this was a particularly idiotic thing to do, but I must plead extenuating circumstances. In the first place, I had just been a partner in the commission of a messy homicide, and was strung up as high as a barrage balloon. Secondly, I had been hardheaded and coldly practical for many hours--indeed, since the night of my last murder in Manchester I had not done an impetuous act, nor played the swaggering gambler with death for any stakes except the highest. It suddenly came to me that I must do a doughty deed, act the bold Quixote for once, to liven up my interest and tone up my reflexes. I was never born to be an ice-brained plotter, although I had been forced by fate into that uncongenial role. Rather for me the swirling cape and impetuous rapier, the big-plumed hat and gallant gesture, the fiery and slightly ridiculous _beau geste_. So I ambled into the wrecked building.