It was the devil of an indecisive position. Jim had turned east, and in another two or three minutes we were going to hit the A 5 road. He might be able to swing straight into the traffic stream without stopping, but we could not count on it. At that time of night there was usually a procession of lorries passing between London and the west Midlands.

It was the hearse’s horn which got us through. It had a deeply respectful note — funereal but commanding enough to make all long-distance lorry drivers jam on their brakes and curse the amateur. Jim halted for a second at the junction. He could not turn right to Bletchley, as we had intended, but he could —just — turn left for Stony Stratford, forcing a truck into the middle of the road and leaving a line of angrily winking headlights behind us. We may very well have given the impression of criminals escaping with the week’s wage packets.

“Only one lot of traffic lights now,” Jim whispered. “I’ll jump ‘em if you say so. But if you’re going to ‘and ‘im over to the police, what’s your ‘urry?”

I explained that I dared not give him a safe chance to jump out.

“How thick are those boards?” I asked.

“Thick enough to keep him in.”

“He’s only got to open the doors at the back.”

“‘E can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because there ain’t no ‘andle on the inside. Passengers don’t need it, like. Not if the coffin’s nailed down proper.”

I remember bursting into a bark of laughter, which I suppose was partly hysterical. So the tiger was as helplessly caught as if he had been a real tiger! It wouldn’t do him any good to kill. Nothing would do him any good. He was on his way to the cage or the taxidermist in a plain, black-varnished box-trap.

The line of lights on the main street of Stony Stratford was just ahead when a police car passed us, pulled across in front and signaled to Jim to stop.

Two of the cops closed in on us, one at my door and one at Jim’s. They were very evidently prepared to tell us that whatever we said was, was not. What has made British police adopt their new fashion of weary brutality? Forced on them by criminals or borrowed from alien films? At any rate I did not trust them to take my story seriously. I wanted an inspector at a desk.

At first they accused Jim of not stopping at a halt sign. When he insisted that he did stop, they dropped the effort to make him confess he didn’t and merely warned him not to take chances. It was pretty clear that the lorry driver who reported us had been a sport and had contented himself with abusing our road sense and our suspicious-looking vehicle.

While one of them examined Jim’s papers, the other ordered me to get out and open up the van.

“Open it yourself I” I said. “And stand behind the door while you do it!”

The van was empty. A flap of the canvas roof hung down, neatly cut out with a knife. The tiger had escaped without even the necessity for any acrobatics. Notches and joints on the corner posts, to which the ornate canopy had once been attached, provided easy footholds.

Either at the junction with the main road or now while the police were lecturing us he had climbed up, quietly and decisively chosen his moment and slid to the ground at the back of the van.

I looked up the road. There on the other side of it was his unmistakable figure walking fast but casually past the first of the street lamps. He waved to a bus turning out of a corner ahead. Naturally it did not wait, but that gave him an excuse to hurry. I pointed at him and may have even opened my mouth to shout “Stop him!” But my arm dropped. What was the use? How in an instant could I persuade those pompous young cops that it was I, not he, who was a law-abiding citizen?

And what charge could I bring? I had not the slightest proof that he had ever been in the van. Jim had never seen his face. I — well, all I could swear after these days and nights of anxiety at the Warren, at the badger fortress and on the road was that I had once observed him out on a quiet country walk. No, for my own safety it was wiser at this point not to reveal that I suspected him. When we met again he could no longer take me by surprise, for I had seen his face and he still did not know it.

I put no limit at all to his daring, but I could safely put a limit to his endurance since he was my own age. So when Jim at last left me at the Warren, I locked the door, relaxed and cheerfully damned the consequences. I had not been in the cottage for nearly thirty-six hours. The letter from Admiral Cunobel, to which Aunt Georgina had referred, was there waiting for me; it was a warm and genial invitation to come over and stay whenever I liked and for as long as I could.

I felt free to do so, at any rate for a week. I was determined not to involve Georgina and a stranger — even if lie had rocked my cradle — in my affairs, but it seemed improbable that my follower could soon begin again to pad along my trail. I had to be found. His careful reconnaissance had to be made.

  Hide and Seek

Next morning I telephoned to the admiral and embarked on one of those very English cross-country journeys which delight me. There is no silence which sings so noticeably in the ears as that of a remote railway junction in the middle of meadows with no village in sight when the noise of the departing train has died away.

Admiral Cunobel had chosen for his retirement a graystone Jacobean farmhouse on the southern tip of the Cotswolds, where he seemed entirely contented with village affairs and his garden. Chipping Marton struck me as a livelier spot than Hernsholt. It was linked with the world, whereas the Midland village, though not far from London, was lost in its pastures. Its first inhabitants had not merely collected together into a Saxon lump; they had built their solid, stone houses in full consciousness of geography. Go downhill on one side and you came to the Severn Estuary. Go downhill on the other and you hit the road from London to Bristol.

The admiral ran the place. He considered it his duty. Chipping Marton, on the other hand, had no use whatever for naval discipline, though it respected energy. Cunobel and his village seemed to live in a state of mutual and exasperated affection.

He drove me home from the station, gave me a drink and then took me round to the vicarage. Georgina was shelling peas in the kitchen. Nur Jehan was also in the kitchen — all fourteen hands of him, colored much as a Siamese cat except that his magnificent tail was deep cream. He breathed down the back of Georgina’s neck with heavy sentimentality.

Georgina pushed his head aside and kissed me on both cheeks, putting an unexpected warmth into her usual formal salutation.

“My dear Charles!” she exclaimed. “I do hope I didn’t alarm you.”

“Not in the least. But if you were in front of the stove instead of the sink and he butted you …”

“What I said on the telephone, I mean. I felt afterwards I might have exaggerated the situation.”

“Georgi, it could not be exaggerated,” said the admiral indignantly.

Nur Jehan, observing that our attention was engaged, took a hearty mouthful from the bowl of peas and blew the rest on the floor.

“In some ways it certainly could not,” Georgina replied. “I draw the line at that damned horse in the kitchen, and I shall have the back-door latch replaced by a mortice lock.”

“Do it myself!” said the admiral. “I’ll come down with a screwdriver tonight. But you can cope, Georgi —always could! It’s that girl I’m sorry for.”

“Which girl?” I asked him.

“Benita, his daughter. She shouldn’t have to chuck everything and come down here to the rescue every three months.”

“I have noticed, Peregrine,” said my aunt, “that long service behind the mast, or whatever it is, produces an unnatural view of women.”

“Well, my dear, you must admit that she does come down to the rescue.”