AT HALF past nine that night d**k Martin’s car pulled up by the side of the road half a mile short of Gallows Cottage, and, dimming his lights, he sat down to wait for the arrival of the police car. He heard the whir of it long before its bright headlamps came into sight, and, starting up his engine, he waited for it to fly past before he followed. The car ahead slowed and turned abruptly into the drive, d**k’s machine immediately behind. By the light of his headlamps he saw that the hole under the hedge had been filled up.
The first car nearly collided with the thickset hedge where the little road turned towards the house, and the driver had a narrow squeak of slipping into the deep ditch that ran immediately under.
Gallows Cottage was in darkness, as it had been when d**k had come befo
