CHAPTER

GARFIELD AND JIMMIE were busy. It was easy enough to pick up the trail at the Twyford station. It was simplicity itself to find the driver of the fly who had taken Eston and the two girls to some unknown destination. But there they stuck.

      "I was told to drive them out three miles on the Reading road," explained the cab-driver." They tumbled out on a lonely piece of highway and there I left them-luggage and all."

      "Wasn't there a house near?" asked Garfield.

      "Not so much as a hut on either side for near three quarters of a mile. The gent was a pleasant-mannered man. He gave me a brown Bradbury."

      "He gave you a pound," said Silverdale. "How did things strike you? Were they all friendly and happy together!"

      The cab-driver jerked his head in assent. Everything was quite all right. People did odd things at times, be pointed out, emphasizing the observation with the stem of his pipe, and for his part he was content to mind his own business whatever kind of place people got down at. Yes, held very willingly drive the gentlemen out the same way to the same spot. Might he be so bold as to inquire whether it was a runaway match? He was a man as minded his own business, but he always kept his eyes and ears open, he did. As soon as he set eyes on the party, he knew there was going to be an elopement. Which one of the young ladies was it, might he ask? A pretty-looking pair, but girls weren't what they were in his young days. He ventured to suppose that—looking hard at Garfield—his girl had, so to speak, got the bit between her teeth.

      The chief inspector came as near to a blush as his constitution would permit and cut the old manys garrulity short. "I'm no relation to either of these ladies," he observed testily. "Suppose you get us along now. Wade—just a second. " He drew his subordinate aside and gave some instructions in a low voice. Wade nodded understandingly and faded away. He had a habit of fading unobtrusively for, though, like all Scotland Yard folk he was a big man, he could be very inconspicuous when he chose.

      Neither Silverdale nor Garfield attached much hope of learning anything from their expedition out of Twyford. It was just one of those episodes which are continually cropping up in investigation work where the guiding axiom is not to neglect anything. They were able to make a shrewd guess as to what had happened.

      "I suppose dear old Sherlock Holmes would learn something from this," said Garfield when they had arrived, surveying the grassy bank, where the fugitive party had been set down, with furrowed brow. "It doesn't need any genius to gather that Eston wouldn't, come here on the spur of the moment. He had some fixed plan in his mind and he was taking no chances of making an easy track for us to follow—if we got on this end at all. They've been picked up here by motor-car, and lord only knows where they've been spirited off to."

      A little two-seated motor-car that was approaching slid to a standstill near them, and one of the occupants alighted. He looked something like a robust farmer.

      "Am I speaking to Chief-Detective Inspector Garfield?" he asked.

      "That's me."

      "Ah, yes. My name is Grimes. I am superintendent of this division of the county constabulary. I heard you had arrived and followed your cab out here. It's the Saxon business, I suppose. I know you are on it."

      "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Grimes. Sbake hands with my friend, Mr. Silverdale. Yes, we thought we might run an end down this way, but nothing seems likely to come of it."

      Grimes took out a well-worn brier pipe and pressed down the tobacco in the bowl with a thick thumb. "I don't know so much about that, Mr. Garfield. We're not all fools in the provincial police forces, though some of your people up at Scotland Yard seem to think so."

      "Some people do run away with the idea that Scotland Yard is the big noise," assented Garfield genially. "I've never believed it myself. The Yard gets more chances, that's all. I was going to call on you, but decided to wait until I'd been out here."

      Silverdale turned away to hide a smile. Officially the various police forces of the United Kingdom work in complete accord and harmony together. Actually things are not always harmonious. Time and again he bad heard London men consign their provincial colleagues to the nether regions as arrant fools; no less often provincial officers had expressed. their private but emphatic view that Scotland Yard was a school for stuck-up blighting idiots.

      "Pity you didn't," said Grimes. "Might have saved you a lot of trouble. We got a message this morning asking us to watch for three people who had reached Twyford by an early train-two women and a man. Their descriptions came along, too, so I had some inquiries made and a look-out kept."

      "They drove out as far as this spot and then changed into a motor-car?"

      "You're right, Mr. Garfield. That car was hired in Reading and came out to meet them here. They've flitted back to London, so you've had a wasted journey. " He blew a cloud of smoke into the air. "Which of them in particular is the bird you're after?"

      Garfield shot a quick glance at his interlocutor and a puzzled look crept into his face. "All of 'em," he said briefly. "I guess I've met you before, haven't I, Mr. Grimes? There's something about you I seem to remember, though I can't seem to place you. I haven't been down this way officially before. "

      "I think I ran aeross you some time ago when I was nosing around the Criminal Record Office. I was an inspector there-but you probbably wouldn't remember me."

      "It may be so," agreed Garfield indifferently, strolling a few paces forward so that Grimes was between Silverdale and himself.

      "I'd like to know a little more about this business if you'll trust me."

      The detective-inspector thrust his face forward until it was within a few inches of Grimes. His jaw jutted out and his eyes were stern. But his voice was mild.

      "Sure about that, old man?" be asked

      "Sure?"

      "What the blazes—" Grimes took a step or two backwards, but Garfield followed him up, pace for pace.

      "I'm thinking that you know too much about this already," he declared. "That little party has not gone to London. It Is here-or some of it. You've got a nerve, Eston, but we've got you cold this time. You've overstepped things for once."

      He leapt as he spoke and the other man by a quick movement tried to evade his grip. But Garfield was an adept in this kind of thing and his powerful hands had fastened around Eston's waist in less time than the flicker of an eyelid might have taken.

      Jimmie's first impulse was to fling himself headlong into the scrap, but he checked himself. Garfield he believed to be fully capable of dealing with Eston in a physical tussle. It was a more vital matter to see that Eston's companion, the driver of the two-seater, did not intervene. Silverdale turned towards the car.

      "You keep there!" he warned.

      The driver had his eyes fixed on the twisting, struggling men and scarcely lifted them to the journalist. "That's all right, guv'nor. Don't you worry about me. I'm not rushing to mix myself up in that, believe me."

      "Better not, " advised Jimmie, and threw a quick glance on the struggling pair, while standing so that he might intervene if the chauffeur should change his mind.

      There could be no comparison physically between the struggling pair. Garfield in weight, height, and strength hopelessly outmatched his opponent. Eston, however, was fighting desperately. The hat and wig that had formed part of his make-up for the character of Grimes had fallen to the ground and oily beads of perspiration were rolling down his forehead and cheeks. Garfield clasped him round the body and was letting him exhaust himself in fruitless struggles. His head was tucked down, boring into Eston's face to avoid the blows the other was trying to shower on him. The two twisted round and round slowly as though in a strange eccentric dance, for Eston's feet—now heavily shod in support of the character he was impersonating—were making their mark on the detective's legs.

      "'Olds him like a grizzly bear," commented the driver with the casual tone of a detached observer. "'E'll crush 'im to death if 'e's not careful."

      Indeed, the futility of the fight seemed to have occurred to Eston for he fell limp all of a sudden and became a dead weight in Garfield's arms.

      "I'm all in," he muttered. "Let me go." Garfield was breathing a little faster than usual. He relaxed the pressure but maintained his hold. "Not on your life," he observed with decision. "You're too slippery a customer to monkey with. Jimmie, come over here. I want to borrow your handkerchief."

      It is one of the scandals of our time that Scotland Yard men do not always carry themselves in a manner befitting popular expectation. The public believes that every criminal hunter carries a pair of handcuffs on his person, ready to snap instantly on the wrists of any wrongdoer. As a matter of fact, handcuffs are only carried by men on escort duty. Garfield, like his colleagues, would in the ordinary course of duty be as likely to find a use for a Lewis gun as for handcuffs.

      The detective with a quick movement shifted his grip to Eston's arms and forced them behind his back. The other made no resistance.

      "You're making a mistake, Garfield, " he observed in a quiet voice. "You've got no evidence of an offense against me."

      "Jimmie," said Garfield, "just knot your handkerchief about this gentleman's wrists."

      He shifted his position on the grass and the prisoner conformed to his movements, but the movement afforded Eston the chance for which he was looking. His leg twined round the detective who was caught at a precarious balance and tumbled backwards into a ditch, releasing Eston in a wild effort to save himself. Almost at the same time the car began to move as the watchful driver, no longer so impassive as when Jimmie's eyes had been on him, thrust in the clutch.

      Luck was with Eston. As Jimmie grabbed at him, he swerved and the slippery grass for which the reporter had made no allowances did the rest. Jimmie sat down heavily. Before either he or Garfield had regained their feet, the little two-seater was twenty yards up the road and gathering speed.

      It is in such contingencies, that a sense of humor is a great asset. Jimmie looked at Garfield, and Garfield looked at Jimmie. The detective was rueful, but there was a twinkle in his eye. They burst into laughter—laughter at their own chagrin. If they had not laughed, they would have cursed.

      The ancient fly-driver, who had sat throughout a detached and open-mouthed observer of the affair, thought they were mad.