"If they do get away, I'll believe I'm dreaming a detective story," he told himself. Nevertheless, the prisoners did escape, and by a ruse so simple that it was almost certain to succeed. The leading van made for Headquarters via Tower Hill and Eastcheap, to avoid the obstructions of Lower Thames Street as much as possible--a move which the strategist would have foreseen. At the turn into Tower Street it encountered a lorry laden with men, who to the casual eye were navvies on their way to work, but who must almost certainly have been a section of the crowd which had made its getaway through the secret door in the upper storey of the sawmill. As the van containing the prisoners took the bend, its escort being still held up in the wedge of Billingsgate traffic, the lorry seemed to get out of hand, and swerved across the road. It caught the Flying Squad van squarely across the bonnet, throwing the whole vehicle round in a complete circle which fetched up in a smash against a lamp-post. The driver of the police van and the man who sat beside him were thrown out and dangerously injured; the two armed men inside, half-stunned by the shock, were quickly overpowered by the "navvies" who swarmed from the lorry. The rescue party and their friends then reëntered the lorry, which in the meantime had been backed out of the wreckage, and which by reason of its superior weight and the angle of impact had suffered no great damage, and were driven off. The rescue was conducted with such well-organised speed that it was obvious that some such contingency had been feared and prepared for, and the proceedings rehearsed beforehand. From start to finish the incident took no longer than three minutes, and the lorry was rushing away through the deserted streets before any of the few spectators could recover from their astonishment. The lorry was driven round the Tower and across Tower Bridge, and later in the day was found abandoned outside a builder's yard in Bermondsey. All this, of course, neither Storm nor Inspector Teal heard until some time afterwards. "There's two more bits of news for you," Teal said in his homeward taxi. "One is that Miss Hawthorne's slipped her man and disappeared." "I knew that," said Storm, although for the first time since the opening of that brief, hectic battle he remembered Susan's threat to return. "What else?" "This." Teal fished in his pocket and brought out a grubby scrap of paper on which a message was typewritten. "Birdie tried to get this put in the _Era_ agony column. The clerk smelt rats and phoned us." Storm read: Allay contemptible inanity. Groan in it ping, correct, a a a, ping, a a a. Attaboy consuming, brass band ping, a, loving wine. Cry alas, glory me, ping. Alone. Weeping, days are long, 2. Try again, a ping, presumably futility. A ping a ping. It is hope, frustrated, pong sadly, ping, drying tears. Inside, to see pong ping, a, come and be blest.