“I confess,” I answered lightly, “that your manner of asking for silence seemed a little abrupt, but it was certainly efficient. Of course, if I had realized what you wanted, I would have been silent without all that display of force.” I tried to seem startled and aggrieved rather than resentful. To some extent I think it worked, for he looked at me curiously, with a shadow of doubt in his eyes. But he visibly swept it aside a moment later and began to talk again. For my part, while I listened to him with half an ear, I was listening as keenly as I could for any evidence of pursuit. Nothing happened for several moments, however, and I was just beginning to wonder whether the whole thing had been planned by him to see whether I knew of any pursuit and would rise to the bait, when the chauffeur suddenly blew three long melancholy blasts on his Klaxon. A moment later he repeated the signal. I found Ivanovitch staring at me keenly. I looked back at him in inquiry. “Is that the signal?” I whispered. “That is the signal. Presently you shall see an example of efficient organization.” The Klaxon signal blew again at this moment, and the driver kept it up at regular intervals for perhaps five minutes. But presently the usual interval passed without a signal, and instantly Ivanovitch opened the rear window and seized my arm. “Come and see,” he said, his voice exultant and vicious. I went to the window and looked back into the darkness. I could make out the faint sound of another car following ours. And as I watched there came a sudden blinding flash in the road only some twenty yards behind us followed by a deafening roar. We must have passed over the spot only a few seconds before. The explosion was followed by the screech of brakes hastily applied. But they were not applied quickly enough, for as our own car quickened its speed, I heard another clanging crash behind us. It was evident that we had been outwitted again. I turned to find Ivanovitch’s ironical eyes on me. “Pretty neat, eh?” he inquired. “Whoever our friends are there behind us, they will not follow us again in a hurry, do you think so?” I pulled myself together and tried to push out of my mind the thought of Pride lying back there in the road, maimed and bleeding. “But great Scott,” I cried, “what did you do? Blow up the road?” “Exactly.” “But people will find the hole in the road and investigate? And they will find the wrecked car and the people in it?” “Oh, no!” Ivanovitch shook his head. “They will find neither one nor the other, my friend. There is a very capable gang of men back there where that explosion took place. In an hour they will have the occupants of the car in a safe place, the car itself out of the way and the road mended—for it is only a dirt road, you know.”