He was perfectly aware that he might be on a wild-goose chase. The taking of the ticket to Southampton might have been a blind, and Douglas might not have done the obvious thing in making a bolt to the most convenient port. After the ruse the man had employed at Myrtle Cottage, Tanner felt he would not do the obvious thing unless he was impelled to it by some strong consideration. But such a consideration existed. There was the element of time. The man would realise that on such a journey he must inevitably be traced, but he would hardly imagine he could be traced in time. Before his pursuers could reach Southampton he would count on having been able to adopt a new personality, and put hundreds of miles of sea between himself and them. The more Tanner thought over this possibility, the more likely it seemed. If he were in Douglas’s position it was the view he himself would have taken. They were running well. Tanner watched the whirling hedges, lit up by the strong headlights, and blurred by the speed into quivering smudges, and judged they must be doing well on to forty miles an hour. It was, of course, breaking the law; moreover, it was by no means safe, but Tanner did not let such considerations weigh against the chance of checkmating the man who had duped him. He had informed the chauffeur he would be responsible if there was trouble. He fell to reckoning distances. He was not very well up in the geography of the district, but he knew there were two roads, north through Yeovil and Salisbury, and south through Dorchester and Poole. He imagined neither of these was quite direct, but he did not know if there was a good road lying between them. In about half an hour they slackened for a town, after which the road rose for some miles. Then in half an hour more it fell again and they ran through another town, whose name appeared on several buildings—Chard. ‘The Salisbury Road,’ thought Tanner. Forty minutes later they left Yeovil behind and at 4.10, nearly three hours after leaving Exeter, they turned out of Salisbury on the Southampton road. ‘Not bad going,’ thought Tanner. ‘If we can keep it up we should be at the boat at twenty to five.’ But alas! the driver’s knowledge of the road which had served them so well up to Salisbury, now failed them. They had to reduce speed at cross roads and run more cautiously. Fortunately, it was now fairly light, or their progress would have been still slower. Tanner, was getting nervous. It was going to be a near thing. He held his watch in his hand and counted the mile-posts as one after another they dropped behind. Now it was half-past four, and still they had nine miles to go. At last they came to the town. But here matters instead of mending, grew much worse. Neither Tanner nor the driver knew the streets, and precious minutes were wasted trying to puzzle out the way from the rather inferior map the latter had brought.