'Beg pardon, sir,' interposed Antrim curtly. Antrim had been looking steadily at me. 'I understood that this fellow's name was Butler.'
'Well, it was Blake when I met him in London,' answered Stone, regarding him curiously. 'But it's possible that he's going round in disguise as well as the rest of 'em. I'm getting a little tired of all this.'
'It's possible he is,' said Antrim in a curious voice-and then his big figure disappeared through the gap in the hedge. Stone blinked. There was a pause.
'I'm sorry if I've spoiled anything, he said calmly, 'I wouldn't have, if I'd known. But that took me off balance, and if you intend to go around giving false names you ought to let me know in advance. I've always regarded the English as a pretty level-headed sort of people, but, so help me Jinny, this is the queerest country I ever got into! I ought to be in Bristol to-night. And if I ever do catch up with Merrivale, which seems unlikely —‘
I let in the clutch. 'He's up there. But there's one thing I'd ask and plead of you: for God's sake stop harping on that tedious joke about disguise — particularly when you meet H.M. And whatever else you do, don't mention his hat.'
The car moved down into the main road. I had the satisfaction of seeing Stone put up a hand bewilderedly to his pince-nez, and of creating some mystification on my own account. He seemed to be puffing vigorously at his cigar. But Antrim had bolted like a rabbit at the mention of a false name: why? I had lost any chance I might have had of learning something from Antrim, though it was some consolation to reflect that I hadn't the remotest notion as to the subject on which I might have learned something. It was all a game in the dark, and very shortly I would literally be playing a very dangerous game in the dark.
I took my time over that drive to Moreton Abbot, leaving Torquay by a roundabout way through the deep lanes. But, when I wound into Moreton Abbot, the first street I found was Valley Road. It was very long, very broad, not too well-lighted, and a picture of suburban respectability. There were long ranks of detached and semi-detached houses, neat and low-built, in stucco or brick or stone, imaginatively or sedately painted, but all looking curiously alike in their mere closeness to each other. Each had a small front-garden minutely laid out with flowers. Each had a brown-painted gate inscribed with some more or less relevant name. Most of the houses were lighted; cyclists toiled along the road with plodding pedals; and through an open window a radio was talking hoarsely.
Though it is usually next to impossible to find a house by name rather than by number, I cruised past 'The Larches' almost at once. The name was fresh-painted on the gate. It had (surprisingly) a larch like a stunted pine- tree growing on either side of a white-painted front door, and it looked even more respectable than its neighbours. But I was relieved to see that the houses on either side were already dark. There appeared to be an alley running along the rank at the rear, and it might have been the safest way in unobserved; but alleys usually mean watchdogs.
I drove on for several hundred yards, and swung into a gloomy turning labelled Liberia Avenue, where I could stop the car and consider. The question was how far away I should park the car. I pulled up to the kerb and lit a cigarette.
And at the same time a hand fell on my shoulder from behind.
A very large policeman was looking down at me in the twilight, with a sort of sad and gloomy satisfaction like Monte Cristo in the melodrama; by the glow of the dashlamps I could see the sergeant's stripes on his arm. At the same moment another policeman appeared at the front. of the car, directing a beam from a bull's-eye lantern at the number-plate.
'You're under arrest,' said the sergeant. 'I have to warn you that anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence- That the right number?' he added over his shoulder.
'Ah,' agreed his companion. 'AXA 564. That's it. Bit of luck, this. Then they both looked at me intently. 'Sst!' warned the second man, after this sinister pause. 'Black bag, sir. Black bag that they told us to look out for.'
'Right,' said the sergeant. He examined the front of the car, finding nothing more significant than my feet; then he looked in the rear, felt under the rug, and with granite triumph produced the case of the Compleat Burglar. 'Out you get, my bucko. Got any objection to my opening this?'
By this time I had (somewhat) got my wits about me.
'I have. A very strong objection. Don't talk rot. In the first place, you've got your formula all wrong. Before you put a man under arrest, especially somebody who's innocent, you're supposed to tell him what he's charged with.'
'I don't mind,' answered the Law grimly. 'For a starter, with the theft of a motor-car. And then we'll go on to grand larceny. Since you know so ruddy much about legal forms, you'll know that the maximum sentence for grand larceny is fourteen years.'
'Who charges me with all this?'
The sergeant permitted himself a grunt approaching a laugh. 'A gentleman named Sir Henry Merrivale and Colonel Charters, who happens to be Chief Constable of thissur county. Eh, Stevens?'
For a second or two I tried to convince myself that this was not a bad dream. With that peculiar cussedness and cross-purpose which always dogs my adventures under H.M.'s direction, it was plain that some mistake had been made; but, in the devil's name, what mistake? This was obviously H.M.'s Lanchester. I knew it as well as I knew my own car at home. Yes, but suppose H.M. and Charters hadn't sent out any such charge at all? Suppose this was a first attempt of the cloudy Enemy? There came into my mind Charters's mention of his secretary, named Serpos, and Charters's comment: 'An expert mimic when you get him started.' Whereupon I fixed the sergeant with a hypnotic eye.
'Look here,' I said. 'You're making a mistake. There's no use arguing with you: all I want to do is prove you're making a mistake. I'm on a very serious mission for the Chief Constable. Let's go along to the police station, by all means; you give me two minutes at a telephone, and I'll prove it. Isn't that fair enough? Neither Sir Henry Merrivale nor Colonel Charters ever sent any such message as that.'
The sergeant looked at me curiously. It is never wise to say too much. Then he climbed into the back of the car, keeping his hand on my shoulder.
'Hang on to the running-board, Stevens,' he ordered. 'You drive straight on. Yes, it's fair enough: if you can prove it.' He chuckled. 'Bluff don't go down with me, my bucko. General alarm was sent out twenty minutes ago from Torquay police station. And the two gentlemen you spoke of came in person to turn in the alarm. In person, my bucko. So they didn't send it out, didn't they? They turned in them charges against you. They also said to keep an eye out for a black bag you would be carrying.'
'Sergeant, everybody can't be crazy. Who am I supposed to be?'
'I dunno, answered my captor, with broad indifference. 'You've probably got plenty of names. They said one of the aliases you might use might be Kenwood Blake.'
I took a deep breath and a firmer grip of the steeringwheel, but the car almost stalled as we set off. If this was for some reason a genuine trick played by the mysterious-moving two who had sent me on this expedition, all I could say was that it was a damned dirty, low-down trick. But I couldn't credit that. I also played with the idea that these might be bogus policemen, though that melodramatic notion was soon dispelled.
The police station was in Liberia Avenue, where it curved to the left only a hundred yards or so from the main road. It was a low-built converted house, set back from the street in a paved yard, with an arc-light burning over the door. My captors took me out of the car and marched me with stately triumph into the charge-room. Behind the desk a fat sandy-haired sergeant, with the collar of his tunic unfastened, sat writing in a book. A clock on the wall over his head said ten minutes to ten. I saw, with unholy relief, a telephone on the desk.
'Got him the minute we stepped out of the station,' said my sergeant, and his colleague at the desk whistled. 'All in order. Here's the black bag. He wants to phone Colonel Charters. Yes: we'll ring up Torquay and make the report. Stevens — put him in there.' He nodded toward a door at the back of the room. 'Now, now, this part of it's private, my bucko! You'll get your chance to speak.'
I had no choice. The careful Stevens opened the door into a little low room with a back door and a back window, after which he poked his head out of the window. Despite the dusk figures and faces were still distinct, and there was a bright arc-lamp in the rear yard. Two policemen were tinkering with the motor of an Austin police- car, while a motorcycle man looked on: there was no possibility of a jail-break. Then Stevens hurried into the outer room, shutting the door, to listen to what promised to be a highly interesting conversation by telephone. It was. I was down on the floor, in a highly curious posture, with my ear to the crack under the door, and probably as boiling mad as anybody in the British Isles.
After getting through to Torquay, the sergeant exchanged some amenities in a leisurely fashion. 'Ha ha,' he
