getting careless about your corners,' the Saint warned him tirelessly. 'You'll be in the ditch at the next one. Look out!'
The flickering screen swelled up and swam in his vision. There was nothing else in the world—nothing but that endlessly winding road uncoiling out of the darkness, the lights of other traffic that leapt up from it, the red light above the screen, and the smack of the leather strop across his shoulders. His brain seemed to be spinning round like a top inside his head when at last, amazingly, the screen went black and the other bulbs in the garage lighted up.
'You can go to sleep now,' said the Saint.
Sir Melvin Flager was incapable of asking questions. A medieval prisoner would have been no more capable of asking questions of a man who released him from the rack. With a groan he slumped back in his seat and fell asleep.
It seemed as if he had scarcely closed his eyes when he was roused again by someone shaking him. He looked up blearily and saw the strange chauffeur leaning over him.
'Wake up,' said Peter Quentin. 'It's five o'clock on Saturday morning, and you've got a lot more miles to cover.'
Flager had no breath to dispute the date. The garage lights had gone out again, and the road was starting to wind out of the cinematograph screen again.
'But you told me I could sleep!' he moaned.
'You get thirty-five minutes every night,' Peter told him pitilessly. 'That averages four hour a week, and that's as much as you allowed Albert Johnson. Look out!'
Twice again Flager was allowed to sleep, for exactly thirty-five minutes; four times he watched his two tormentors change places, a fresh man taking up the task while the other lay down on the very comfortable bed which had been made up in one corner and slept serenely. Every three hours he had five minutes' rest and a glass of water, every six hours he had ten minutes' rest, a cup of coffee, and a sandwich. But the instant that these timed five or ten minutes had elapsed, the projector was started up again, the synchronisation switch was thrown over, and he had to go on driving.
Time ceased to have any meaning. When, after his first sleep, he was told that it was only five o'clock on Saturday morning, he could have believed that he had been driving for a week; before his ordeal was over, he felt as if he had been at the wheel for seven years. By Saturday night he felt he was going mad; by Sunday morning he thought he was going to die; by Sunday night he was a quivering wreck. The strap fell on his shoulders many times during the last few hours, when the recurrent sting of it was almost the only thing that kept his eyes open; but he was too weary even to cry out. . . .
And then, at the end of what might have been centuries, Monday morning dawned outside; and the Saint looked at his watch and reversed the switches.
'You can go to sleep again now,' he said for the last time; but Sir Melvin Flager was asleep almost before the last word was out of his mouth.
Sunken in the coma of utter exhaustion, Flager did not even feel himself being unstrapped and unhandcuffed from his perch; he did not feel the clothes being replaced on his inflamed back, nor did he even rouse as he was carried into his own car and driven swiftly away.
And then again he was being shaken by the shoulder, woken up. Whimpering, he groped for the steering wheel— and did not find it. The shaking at his shoulder went on.
'All right,' he blubbered. 'All right. I'm trying to do it. Can't you let me sleep a little—just once. . . .'
'Sir Melvin! Sir Melvin!'
Flager forced open his bloodshot eyes. His hands were free. He was sitting in his own car, which was standing outside his own house. It was his valet who was shaking him.
'Sir Melvin! Try to wake up, sir. Where have you been? Are you ill, sir?'
