about French towns pretending to be peasants and attempting to keep a watch on a hotel before they wrote so glibly about such things. His feet were sore, the pavements hard, the weather was foully hot and he had drunk more cups of black coffee than were good for his nervous system. He had also been moved on by several shopkeepers who objected to being stared at for half an hour at a time by a shifty man wearing dark glasses and a beret. He'd also had the problem of avoiding the street outside the hotel and this meant that he had to walk down a back-alley, along another street and up a third to vary the corners from which he watched. All in all Slymne made a rough calculation that he must have trudged fifteen miles during the course of the day. And for all his pains he had learnt nothing except that Glodstone hadn't left the hotel, or if he had, he hadn't used the Bentley.
And it was the Bentley that most interested Slymne. As he wandered the streets or stared so menacingly into shop windows his mind, hyped by too much caffeine, tried to devise ways of following the car without keeping it in sight. In books it was quite simple. Reality was something else again. So were boys. On the other hand if he could only bring the Bentley to a halt in some lonely spot Glodstone would have to leave the car and go for help. Slymne remembered the time when an enterprising fourteen-year-old at Groxbourne had stuffed a potato up the exhaust pipe of the Art master's car to such good effect that the man had had to have it towed away and the engine stripped before anyone had found out what was wrong. And there had been talk of another master's car which had been wrecked before the War by adding sugar to it petrol tank. Inspired by these memories, Slymne went into a cafe and ordered a calvados. Under its influence, and that of a second, he reversed his order of priorities. If Glodstone started south again Slymne could stay ahead of him by sticking to the main roads. Bu not in the Cortina. One glimpse of its number plate would give the game away.
Slymne left the cafe in search of a garage where he could hire car. Having found one, he moved his luggage from the Cortina to Citroen, bought two kilos of sugar, another kilo of nails, several large cans of oil at different garages, and parked near the hotel. If Glodstone left that night, he was in for a nasty surprise. Wearily he looked at his watch. It was nine o'clock. He would give Glodstone until midnight. But at ten-thirty the Bentley's bonnet poked cautiously from the garage, paused for a moment and then swung south. Slymne let it go and when it had turned the corner started the car and moved after it. Five minutes later he watched it turn onto the Anet road. Slymne put his foot down, doing ninety on the N183, and before Glodstone could have entered the Foret de Dreux, the Citroen was six kilometres ahead of him.
Chapter 11
In the event, he need not have hurried. Glodstone was taking his time. Twice he had turned down side roads and switched off his lights.
'Because,' he said, 'I want to give them a chance to go by. They've been waiting to see what we're going to do and they'll follow. But they won't know which road we've taken and they'll have to look.'
'Yes, but when they don't find us, won't they watch the roads ahead?' asked Peregrine who was enjoying himself unstrapping the revolvers from their hiding places beneath the seats.
Glodstone shook his head. 'They may later on, but for the moment they'll assume we're travelling fast. I mean they would if they were in our shoes. But we'll move slowly. And France is a big country. If we lose them here they'll have a thousand roads to search much further south. And here, I think, they come.'
'How do you know?' whispered Peregrine as a Jaguar shot past the side road. Glodstone started the Bentley.
'Because French headlights are yellow and those were white,' he said, 'and if I'm not mistaken, our Englishman at Calais is the link man. He's probably above suspicion too. Some wealthy member of the Bar whose Club is White's and who moves in the best circles. Now a Jag may
