expect me to believe it was carried out by an English schoolteacher who...' He was interrupted by the telephone. When he put it down Commissaire Roudhon no longer knew what to think.
'A man answering that description and driving a Bentley crossed from Cherbourg this morning. Ticket made out in the name of Glodstone. I'll inform Paris. They can decide how to play it from now on. I am a policeman, not a bloody politician.'
'What shall we do with these two?'
'Put them in a cell together and tape every single word they say. Better still, install a video camera. If they pass messages I want to know. In any case, it's the sort of thing that'll impress the Americans. They're flying ten anti-terrorist specialists in from Frankfurt, and they're going to need some convincing.'
Slymne was still gibbering when they came for him. He was too feeble to resist and what he said made even less sense than before but they carried him down the passage and put him in a larger cell.
'God Almighty,' said the Major when he was led in too. 'You poor sod. What did the buggers do to you, use electrodes on your bollocks or something?'
'Don't touch me,' squealed Slymne squinting at him.
'I don't intend to, old boy. Count me out. All I do know is that Glodstone's got something coming to him.'
In his hotel room in Margate, Glodstone looked at himself in the mirror. Without his moustache and wearing dark glasses he did look different. He also looked a great deal older. Not that that would help matters in the slightest if they caught him. He'd be over eighty by the time he was released if they ever bothered to let people out who had been partly responsible for assassinating American political advisers. He rather doubted it. He was also extremely dubious about having followed the Countess's advice but he'd been too exhausted and numb with terror the day before to be able to think for himself. And Peregrine had been no help. He'd made matters worse by wanting to lie low in a hole in a hedge like the man in Rogue Male.
'Nobody would think of looking there,' he'd said, 'and when it's all blown over...'
'It isn't going to blow over, damn you,' said Glodstone, 'and anyway we'd come out stinking like a couple of ferrets with BO.'
'Not if we found somewhere near a stream and bought some soap. We could stock up with tins of food and dig a really deep burrow and no one would ever know.'
'Except every farmer in the district. Anyway, cub-hunting's coming up shortly and I'm not going to be chased across country by a pack of hounds or earthed up. Use your loaf.'
'I still don't think we should do what that woman said. She could have been lying.'
'And I suppose you think the Daily Telegraph's lying too,' said Glodstone. 'She told us it was an international gathering and she was bloody well right.'
'Then why did she write you those letters? She asked us to '
'She didn't. Can't you see that? They were forgeries and we've been framed. And so's she.'
'I can't see why. I mean...'
'Because if we're caught and we say she wrote those letters she can't prove she didn't.'
'But you burnt them.'
Glodstone sighed, and wished to hell he hadn't. 'She didn't know that. That's how I knew she was telling the truth. She hadn't a clue about the damned things. And if she'd been going to do us down she'd have gone to the police when she went off to get petrol. Surely that told you something?'
'I suppose so,' said Peregrine, only to bring up the question of the revolvers. 'The Major's going to be jolly angry when he finds they're missing from the armoury,' he said.
Glodstone stifled the retort that what Major Fetherington felt was the least of their problems. If the damned man hadn't trained Peregrine to be such an efficient killer they might not have been in this terrible mess. And mess was putting it mildly. Their fingerprints were all
