CHAPTER XXIX

BREAK AWAY

They got him away. Somehow, after a second eternity of effort, he was free of the swaying, cursing throng. Leaning against the wall, panting, drawing a bleeding, aching hand across his filming eyes. Susan clutching his hand, straining herself against him. Teal's arm around his shoulders, supporting him.

Out of the Valley of the Shadow.... Homeric....

Men were still pouring through a door which had been knocked off its hinges, struggling in scattered knots to overpower the last stand of the Triangle. The Apex himself was not among them.

"The Big Triangle!" gasped Storm. "Teal--get him! Black mask ... he's gone!"

"It's all right," soothed Teal clumsily, and Storm shook him off with an impatient shrug.

"It's all wrong! You've got to get him! Tear down the hangings! There must be another exit."

Teal obeyed, Storm helping as best he could. Other detectives were at work immediately.

And so they saw that at the end of the room where the dais was, the curtains hung three feet off the wall, leaving a hidden alley at the end of which was a door. Teal was the first through, and when he saw where he was he nearly choked, for it was the narrow passage where he had caught Blaythwayt.

When they reached the hall they found it deserted, for every man on the job was by then crowded into the throne room to help the fight. In a sudden flash of intuition Teal raced for the cellar stairs, and, as he opened the door, he distinctly heard the clatter of shoes on stone slabs die away.

"Through the garage!"

They could be but a little way behind. Teal pounded down the steps, with Storm hard on his heels. Even as they reached the cellar level, they caught a glimpse of a tall figure sprinting down the gloom of the short passage towards the now open panel in the tire cupboard. Storm kept up with Teal in that hectic chase--how, he never knew. He was tired unto death, but a superhuman will-power kept him going when every fibre of his body shrieked for rest. And they were in the tunnel when they heard the roar of a racing car's exhaust.

_An instant later a second exhaust stammered into life!_

Storm remembered the two silver racing cars he had seen when they brought him into the garage in the taxi.

"Who in glory's that?" Teal's amazed ejaculation as he ran.

Then they burst into the garage itself. The first car was already in the mews, and they were in time to see the tail of the second disappear round the smashed door of the lock-up. There was no chance of starting up another of the cars to follow in pursuit--even assuming that one of those which were left would be capable of overtaking either of the first two lean, speedy super-cars, which was unlikely. Teal and Storm sprinted down the mews, Teal dragging his revolver from his pocket as he went.

They saw the hinder car turn right as they entered the mews, and as they reached the end they saw it skid round into Buckingham Gate, with the driver hunched up over the wheel in an attitude of desperate concentration.

Then they were in Buckingham Gate themselves, and, standing on the kerb, they witnessed a play which might have been lifted from a sensational movie scenario.

The first car had a lead of about fifty yards, and was increasing it. And then they heard a hideous, clanking grind. The driver had missed his gears. The racking, tortured noise went on, mingling with the deafening drone of the racing engine, as the masked man strove frenziedly to force the cogs to engage. And while he did so he turned in the seat and they saw a gun in his hand. The second car was gaining ground rapidly now, and then the revolver cracked, and the second driver's cap went spinning. Again the masked man fired--twice--and Storm and Teal heard the whine of the bullets passing over their heads.

"Je-rusalem--he's shooting at us!" Storm exclaimed, and began running towards the two cars.

The leading racer was slowing down, for the almost continuous grating which came from it showed that the masked man had still failed to get in gear again. The distance between the two speedsters was lessening swiftly--twenty yards ... fifteen ... ten ... and the second car moving like a streak of light. For the last time the masked man fired, practically at point-blank range, but although his bullet might have stopped a charging man it could not stop a charging car. And charging the second car was, heading straight for the decelerating racer.

And the pursuing car must have been travelling at over sixty miles an hour....

Teal and Storm came up some minutes after the collision. A mangled wreck of twisted machinery and rent and crushed aluminium--that was all. With two bodies jammed in the ruins, weltering in a spreading pool of petrol tinted with something red.

It was some time before they could get at the two men. One was James Norman Mattock--dead, with the masked man's bullet through his brain. Death had wiped the hard lines from his thin face, taken the prison bitterness out of his glazing eyes. It seemed as if a faint, peaceful smile lay on his lips.

Mechanically Inspector Teal doffed his hat in the presence of death--for the first time in his life. It was not because of James Norman Mattock.

"Poor Joan--poor kid," he muttered under his breath.

And then they turned to the second body. The black felt hat had fallen off, and they saw the greying hair which had once been Saxon yellow.

Storm, knowing that the man was dead, turned and walked slowly away.

It was the detective who bent and unfastened the black silk handkerchief. And one long, dazed exhalation whistled through the teeth of Mr. Teal, that bored and placid man.

"Great Kippered Herring!" he breathed. "Lord Hannassay!"