would be seen dead there. 'And buy a pair of dark glasses and shave your moustache. And if I were you I'd sell treasure here to the first dealer you can find.'
'Sell the Bentley?' said Glodstone. It was the final straw. 'I couldn't do that.'
'In that case, stew in a French hoosegow for the rest of your natural. You don't seem to know what your prospects are. Well, I'm telling you. They're zero minus forty. Permafrost all the way to the Judgement Day. Amen.'
'Oh God. Oh God! How did this ever happen? It's too horrible to be real.'
For a moment the Countess felt a twinge of pity for him. The world was full of people like Glodstone who played at life and only discovered reality when it kicked them in the face. 'Roast lamb and abattoirs,' she said inconsequentially and was surprised when he picked up the message.
'Or to the slaughter.' He paused and looked at her. 'What are you going to do?'
'Think about it. You go and fetch Butch Cassidy. On foot. If I'm not here when you get back stay at the Marine Hotel in Margate and register as Mr Cassidy. I'll call you there.'
'Is there a Marine Hotel in Margate?'
'If there isn't, choose one with two AA stars and I'll call them all.'
Glodstone trudged disconsolately from the car park and found Peregrine eating an ice-cream and studying some girls in bikinis with an almost healthy interest. When they returned to the car the Countess had vanished. She was sitting in the bus station waiting for one that would take her to Bournemouth and from there she'd catch a train to London.
'I don't trust that woman,' said Peregrine grimly.
'You'd better,' said Glodstone. 'She's all that stands between us and the reintroduction of the guillotine.'
'I tell you the whole thing was a joke,' said the Major, 'I did not drop by parachute so I don't know where it's buried.' He was standing by the roadside surrounded by armed gendarmes. Nobody else thought it was a joke.
'Monsieur chooses to play games with us,' said the Commissaire. 'Ah well, we too can play games. Back to the station.'
'Now hang on,' said the Major, 'I don't know what Glodstone's done but...'
'Glodstone? Who is this Glodstone?'
'Hasn't Slymne told you? I thought...'
'What did you think? No, I want to hear from you what this man Glodstone is.'
Major Fetherington told him. He wasn't going through Slymne's experience before he cracked and obviously Glodstone had asked for it.
'It fits the description of the one who called himself Pringle,' said the Inspector when he had finished, 'but he rescued Botwyk. Why should he then shoot him?'
'Who knows why the English do things? Only the good God knows that. In the meantime, put out a full alert for him. All airports, frontier posts, everywhere.'
'Do we ask Scotland Yard?'
Commissaire Roudhon hesitated. 'I'll have to check with Paris first. And I want these two grilled for every bit of information they've got. They must have known more about the operation than they've admitted so far or they wouldn't be down here.'
He drove off in a hurry and the Major was shoved into the back of a van and taken back to Boosat. For the rest of the day he sat answering questions and at the end of it no one was any the wiser. Inspector Ficard made his report to an incredulous Commissaire.
'An adventure? The Countess wrote to him asking to be rescued? He came down in an ancient Bentley? And they come looking for a boy called Peregrine Clyde-Browne because his father wanted him back? What sort of madness is this?'
'It's what the other one, Slymne, told us.'
'So they had a ready-made story. We have a major political assassination to deal with and you
