"Plenty of petrol?" Narkom faced round as he spoke and looked at Lennard. "Plenty, sir." "All right--_beat it!_ The boat sails from Dover at eleven. I've got to catch it. Understand?" "Yes, sir. But you could wire down and have her held over till we get there, Superintendent." "Not for the world! She must sail on time; I must get aboard without being noticed--without some persons I'm following having the least cause for suspicion. Beat that train--do you hear me?--_beat_ it! I want to get there and get aboard that boat before the others arrive. Do you want any further incentive than that? If so, here it is for you: Mr. Cleek's in Paris! Mr. Cleek's in danger!" "Mr. Cleek? God's truth! Hop in sir, hop in! I'll have you there ahead of that train if I dash down the Admiralty Pier in flames from front to rear. Just let me get to the open road, sir, and I'll show you something to make you sit up." He did. Once out of the track of all traffic, and with the lights of the city well at his back, he strapped his goggles tight, jerked his cap down to his eyebrows, and leaned over the wheel. "For Mr. Cleek--do you hear?" he said, addressing the car as if it were a human being. "Now, then, show what you're made of! There! Take your head! Now _go_, you vixen! GO!" There was a sudden roar, a sudden leap; then the car shot forward as though all the gales of all the universe were sweeping it on, and the wild race to the coast began. Narkom jerked down the blinds, turned on the light, and flung open the locker, as they pounded on. "Dip in. Get something that can be made to fit you," he said to Dollops. "We can't risk any of those fellows identifying you as the chap who was hanging round the station to-night. Toss me over that wig--the gray one--in the far corner there. God knows what we're on the track of, but if it leads to Cleek I'll follow it to the end of time!" Then, lifting his voice until it sounded above the motor's roar, "Faster, Lennard, faster!" he called. "Give it to her! give it to her! We've got to beat that train if it kills us!" They did beat it. The engine's light was not even in sight when the bright glare of the moon on the Channel's waters flashed up out of the darkness before them; nor was the sound of the train's coming even faintly audible as yet, when, a few minutes later, the limousine swung down the incline and came to a standstill within a stone's throw of the entrance to the pier, at whose extreme end the packet lay, with gangways down and fires up and her huge bulk rising and falling with the movements of the waves.