Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/307

 was kneeling and looking out a glass in a rear curtain at a car coming up with gunmen to shoot her. A bullet, and she would lie as Adele had lain, and as had been told so fully in the court. "Get down!" said Mr. Clarke, and he reached back and grasped her. "Get down on the floor, Joan Daisy!"

She felt herself firmly held; she turned, his hands guiding her, and she faced him, as he knelt in his seat with his arms over the back of it, grasping her.

"I think they'll shoot," he said, speaking steadily as he had before. "You get down on the floor."

"What are you doing?" she asked him.

"Get down," he begged, and his hands pressed her down as a glare of light darted through the little window and the snow alongside was agleam.

The driver of the other car had flashed on his headlights, and a spotlight played on the rear curtain and through the little window. Looking back into the glare, Calvin saw the car swing to the side as it came closer, and he called to Neski, "Now!"

They had agreed, Neski and he, to keep to the road as long as they were ahead; for of course it was possible that the unlighted car bore, not Baretta and Frankie Zenn, but merely a drunken party on a wild, midnight joyride; it was possible, too, that luck of engine or of tire would intervene and let Neski's machine slip away upon the road; but before the car was overtaken Neski would turn into the fields.

Calvin had given the signal for this, and he braced himself for the jolt, or perhaps the overturn, when the little car left the road; and with one hand he held firmly to Joan Daisy. He expected firing at any moment, with bullets ripping through the flimsy canvas of the rear. He carried no pistol, so he had taken Neski's, only to find himself helpless to use it until the pursuers declared them-