A Rough Shoot by Geoffrey Household Page A

into the house to cut the telephone wires. I jumped out too, and locked the garage, so that, if we hadn’t been watched, it wouldn’t be immediately obvious that my car was out.
    It was now six-fifteen, and exactly half an hour since the inspector had left. We couldn’t have more than a minute or two to get away. As a matter of course I turned to the right, up the valley, for I couldn’t go the other way in case I ran slap into the police car racing out from Dorchester; but I had barely changed up into top before Sandorski shouted:
    “Stop! Damn!”
    I thought he had forgotten something essential, and that we were done.
    “Straight into the net! Rabbits! Attack, ha? Attack, even if you’ve got to run! Turn the car around and put out your lights, my lad.”
    When I had obeyed, he explained that just as soon as the Yard man and Hiart compared those boots of mine with a plaster cast, they would be pretty sure that I and my companion, if I had one, would try to escape. Any available police would at once be ordered by telephone to keep an eye on the road we were following. The police car itself could stop the other end of the road.
    I climbed up the bank to watch. I didn’t have long to wait. Indeed the lights of the cars were already in sight. There were two of them. They stopped outside my darkened house. I could hear the police hammering on the door Then they went round to the back, and the lights were switched on. The cars had left plenty of room on the road I tore past them, with the needle of the speedometer jumping from twenty to sixty. I was keeping my eyes on the road. Sandorski said that everyone was in the house or at the back, and that the only people to see us were the drivers of the police cars.
    I reckoned that one of the drivers would run into the house, that somebody would then jump for the telephone and discover that the wires were cut, and that only then would one of the cars turn and give chase.
    That gave me a start of at least one minute and probably three and I felt reasonably sure of holding it even against the brilliant driving of the police. I went along that road to my office, by car or bicycle, six days of the week, and I knew every twist and narrowing. I decided to stick to it, and not to jam myself in the lanes. A cross-country route might trick the pursuit for an hour or two, but in the end would only give them time to draw the cordon tighter round the district where we must be.
    I did the seven miles to the outskirts of Dorchester in eight minutes, and please God I never have to do such a piece of driving again! Sandorski reported nothing in sight behind. At the bottom of the town was a fork, and there I turned sharp left, going back more or less parallel to the road I had come on, and separated from it by flat water meadows.
    There I drove sedately like any family farmer returning home. I saw the lights of a fast car hurling along the road we had just left, and gambled that the police would also see my lights, and decide that it couldn’t be me. That was what happened. Sandorski reported that the police car had rushed straight on up the hill into Dorchester. There they were bound, as they thought, to have news of me. I must have been seen or stopped.
    Now we sailed away northwards over the downs, passing little traffic and, thank heaven, no village bobby to notice our number. Not that he need bother with numbers. My car was a smart light gray, and horribly conspicuous at night.
    When I thought we were likely to have passed out of the probable area of search, I turned into a lane and stopped. Far beyond us, of course, there would be check points or roving patrol cars to cut us off from London, but we were now between the lines with time to think.
    I told Lex to come up and take a breather. He put out an unhappy and disgusting head.
    “I vos ill,” he said.
    “All for the cause!” exclaimed Sandorski. “Heil Hitler!”
    “Why you say that?” asked Lex very seriously.
    “Ask our friend