muttered curse he started his Ford Cortina and followed at a discreet distance in time to see the Bentley cross the bridge and turn a little later onto the Mantes road. For a few minutes Slymne was delighted before it dawned on him that, if Glodstone had intended to give up the expedition, there would have been no need for him to have left the hotel or to have taken the road south in the first place. The natural thing to do would have been to spend the night in Ivry-La-Bataille and head back towards Calais next morning. But Glodstone hadn't done the natural thing and moreover, to complicate matters, he wasn't alone. There had been another passenger in the Bentley. Slymne hadn't been able to glimpse his face but evidently Glodstone had persuaded some other damned romantic to join him on his adventure. Another bloody complication. With a fresh sense of exasperation, he followed the Bentley and wondered what to do next. At least the great car wasn't difficult to spot and was in fact extremely conspicuous while his own Cortina was relatively anonymous and could easily match the Bentley for speed.
As they reached the outskirts of Mantes, Slymne made another plan. If Glodstone left the town travelling north, well and good, but if he turned south, Slymne would drive for the Chateau and be ready to take action before Glodstone could get to see the Countess.
What action he would take he had no idea, but he would have to think of something. In the event, he was forced to think of other things. Instead of leaving Mantes, the Bentley pulled up outside a hotel. Slymne turned into a side street. Five minutes later, the Bentley had been unloaded and then driven into the hotel garage.
Slymne shuddered. Obviously Glodstone was spending the night but there was no telling when he would leave next morning and the idea of staying awake in case the blasted man decided to make a dawn start was not in the least appealing. Slymne wasn't remaining where he was in a sidestreet. Glodstone might, and, by all the laws of nature, must be exhausted but he was still capable of taking a stroll round the neighbourhood before going to bed and would, if he saw it, immediately recognize the Cortina. Slymne started the car and drove back the way he had come before stopping and wondering what the hell to do the next. He couldn't send yet another message from the Countess. Unless the old cow possessed second sight she couldn't know where Glodstone had got to, and anyway letters didn't travel several hundred miles in a couple of hours.
Slymne consulted the map and found no comfort in it. All roads might lead to Rome, but Mantes was a contender when it came to roads leading from it. There was even a motorway running into Paris which they had driven under on the way into town. Slymne dismissed it. Glodstone loathed motorways and if he did turn south again his inclination would be to stick to minor roads. By watching the intersection on the outskirts of the town he would be in a position to follow if Glodstone took one. But the 'if' was too uncertain for Slymne's liking and in any case following was insufficient. He had to stop the idiot from reaching the Chateau with those damning letters.
Slymne drove on until he found a cafe and spent the next hour gloomily having supper and cursing the day he had ever gone to Groxbourne and even more vehemently the day he had set up this absurd plan. 'Must have been mad,' he muttered to himself over a second brandy and then, having paid the bill, went back to his car and consulted the map again. This time his attention was centred on the district round the Chateau. If Glodstone continued on his infernal mission he would have to pass through Limoges and Brive or find some tortuous byroads round them. Again Slymne considered Glodstone's peculiar psychology and decided that the latter course would be more likely. So that put paid to any attempt to stay ahead of the brute. He would have to devise some means of following him.
But for the moment he needed sleep. He found it eventually in a dingy room above the cafe where he was kept awake by the sound of a jukebox and by obsessive thoughts that Glodstone might already have left his hotel and be driving frantically through the night towards Carmagnac. But when he got up groggily at six and after drinking several black coffees, walked back into town he was reassured by the sight of the Bentley being washed down by a young man with black hair who
