Just then he felt something spring on to the car. On the clutch side, springing over the door, a form squeezed down on the outer side of Mabuse. Two hands covered his own, snatched the steering-gear from him, and a wild, hoarse, impressive voice whispered, “Doctor, I’m here: it’s George. Give me the wheel. We are surrounded. Straight forward into the lake....” Mabuse yielded the wheel and let go the brakes. Under its new guide the car dashed ahead, thundered round the grey walls of the villa, abruptly turned a corner, got on to a grass-plot, and raced frantically across it, along the sloping gravel patch to the wall which divided the lake from the garden above. Through the gate in the wall it leaped like a wild horse and then clattered down the inclined wooden footway, the boards thundering beneath it. A moment later its nose was in the water and the lake hissing around it. George leant forward as quick as lightning and gripped levers, Mabuse helping him. The night re-echoed the Countess’s cry, and then the vehicle, tottering slightly at first, but slowly righting itself, went onward over the surface of the water. “Splendid!” cried George. “It is working like magic!” This car was an invention of his own. It could be driven straight from the highroad into the water without stopping, and a couple of levers turned it at once into a motor-boat. “It is the pigeons that have done the mischief,” said George, when he had gained thorough control of his vessel. “After they arrived in the dark, about an hour ago, I seemed to hear whispering voices behind a shrubbery. I looked very carefully round, and thought I noticed a movement going all round the park. In one place, and then twenty paces further on, and then twenty paces beyond that again, in a circle, the whole way round, so then I knew we were surrounded. However, I managed to get to the gate leading to the garden without being seen. It took me fifty minutes to do the hundred yards. If we had not had this car, we should now be sitting handcuffed inside the Villa Elise.” The constables, who had distributed themselves with all possible precautions about the villa, and had taken four hours to complete the ring around it, one after another taking up his position, had heard the car thundering along through the silent night. They lay in tense expectation at their posts, awaiting the whistle which should summon them to the house to fall upon the criminals.