"I won't touch a bally thing," I assured him, and as there was no one within six feet of me, I hopped in behind the wheel. At once they all shouted angrily; but there was no suspicion of me yet. It is the firm belief of the lower-middle classes that anyone who bleats and says "bally" and "dashed" is a regular Bertie Wooster character and as harmless as a sheep, although somewhat less attractive. "Come out o' that, sir!" yelled the constable. "Just want to get the feel of it, you know," said I reassuringly. "Want to tell old Algy I sat in what's-his-name's seat." "I thought you said Algy was killed in a wreck." "That was Algy Witherspoon, my cousin," I told him reproachfully, secretly extracting the ignition key from my pocket. "This is young Algy Pope, my _other_ cousin. Regular ripping chappy on murders and all that, Algy is. Tell you all about Crippen, and whoozis that did in his maiden aunt over at that little place in Sussex, and all such bloody--pardon the expression--goin's-on. Likes birds, too. Sits about in swamps watchin' them. Deuced rum feller." Suspicion must have dawned just about then. _They_ moved toward me, while the humans still hesitated. I slid the key in under cover of my bent body, chortling something inane about the mythical Algy, and stepped on the clutch. A hand was laid heavily on my shoulder. The Jaguar leaped backwards at the same instant, hit someone who reeled away with a scream, rocked crazily over the rubble and struck the road. I twisted her madly around, waved my hand in an appropriately cavalier-like manner, and sped off south-eastward on the great road that leads to London. Shouts of rage followed me. I patted the Jaguar's wheel. "Everything's all right, baby," I said. "Old Will is back. It'll all be all right now." I devoutly hoped that it would be. CHAPTER XIII It is a hundred and fifteen or twenty miles from Birmingham to London. Having gambled the fate of the world on a silly trick, and won back my two-seater from the very hands of the law and of the usurpers, I was wonderfully bouyed up; and decided to go down to my gang's headquarters and tell them all the new developments. I was aching to talk to someone ... preferably Marion.