where they had been? Why should he think it would be hard for
them to explain their actions?

"There isn't any answer," he said to himself.

"And, if there was, I'm a juggins to be trying to find it now.
I'd better keep my mind on this old machine, or it will ditch me!
I know what I've got to do, anyhow, even if I don't know why."

Mile after mile he rode, getting the very best speed he could out
of the machine. Somewhere ahead of him, he was sure, riding back
toward London, was Graves. In this wild pursuit he was taking
chances, of course. Graves might have turned off the road almost
anywhere. But if he had done that, there was nothing to be done
about it, that much was certain. He could only keep on with the
pursuit, hoping that his quarry was following the straight road
toward London. And, to be sure, there was every reason for him to
hope just that. By this time it was very late. No one was
abroad, the countryside was asleep. Once or twice he did find
someone in the streets of a village as he swept through, then he
stopped, and asked it a man on another motorcycle had passed ahead
of him. Two or three times the yokel he questioned didn't know,
twice, however, he did get a definite assurance that Graves was
ahead of him.

Somehow he never thought of the outrageously illegal speed he was
making. He knew the importance of his errand, and that, moreover,
he was a menace to nothing but the sleep of those he disturbed.
No one was abroad to get in his way, and he forgot utterly that
there might be need for caution, until, as he went through a fair