He slid into a semi-reverie in which he seemed to stand back and watch thoughts and ideas form and twist themselves into designs and patterns. Little by little a certain pattern stitched itself into shape, and it bothered him. He stirred, ran it through again, and it still bothered him. He sat up.

“Illya,” he murmured, in a deliberately casual tone. “I’ve been thinking.”

“You can have fun like that, if you don’t overdo it.”

“I’ve been thinking,” he repeated deliberately, “what I would do, if I had been driving a truckload of beer peacefully through the night, and then, for no apparent reason, it suddenly blew itself all to pieces behind my back. And especially if I then saw a small pickup truck go sailing by right after that.”

“What would you do?” Illya demanded.

“Well, I think I’d take a moment or two to gather my thoughts, but then I would hie me to the nearest telephone, and inform the place I had just departed from. Wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose.” Illya agreed uneasily. “That’s if they have telephones!”

“We’re not that backward!” Sarah cried. “Of course we have the telephone!”

“Yes!” Solo stared thoughtfully at the long straight stretch of deserted road ahead. “I sort of thought you had, somehow. Well, then I went on to imagine what the person at the other end would think. The dispatcher, I mean. First one driver calls in to say his shipment has been bombed. Then the second. And then the third. And each one also reports an interfering little pickup appearing from nowhere on an otherwise deserted road.”

“And then?” Sarah seemed to be holding her breath.

“Somebody puts three ones together and gets three plus. Somebody looks at a map and does some figuring. Somebody sends somebody else—a plural somebody else, with muscles—to find out just what goes on.”

“The next question is,” Kuryakin murmured, “would they follow the truck route, which would be rather pointless and a delay, or would they be smart and try to intercept us by another route?”

“The question is well put. I have a feeling the answer is about to be supplied free of charge. Far in the distance I see headlights bearing down on us. The first signs of traffic I’ve seen since we left the last truck!”

The other two peered ahead urgently and saw the faraway eyes coming fast to meet them. Sarah caught her breath.

Kuryakin said, “If they run true to King Mike’s form, they should be large men with shotguns, but I doubt if they’ll have anything else on hand at short notice. How long would you say, Napoleon?”

“Fifteen minutes at the outside, by the rate they’re traveling. We can pull off the road and let them go by.”

“I doubt it would work. They must have seen our lights just as we’ve seen theirs. I’ll have to arrange a diversion for them.”

Solo wasted no time in asking what. He eased his foot from the gas just a shade. “What do you want us to do?”

“If it is them, as we suspect, better pull up when they say, and keep them guessing for about five minutes. Perhaps Miss Sarah could act drunk. I need only about five minutes. As soon as you hear me yell, get rolling again. I’ll pick you up.”

With no more ado he stood, eased himself out of the door of the cab and squirmed away out and over into the back of the truck. Solo drew in a breath to steady himself, and made a tight grin for Sarah.

“You’re about to drop your reputation in the mud and walk all over it,” he told her. “If this is an interception committee from the brewery, then some of them will know you by sight. Do you mind?”

“I’d rather have their scorn than a couple of barrels of buckshot,” she said practically. She peered intently at the staring lights, which were now very close. “It’s them all right. That looks like our local delivery lorry.” The headlights began to weave in zig-zag fashion across the road so that there could be no doubt they wanted the pickup to halt. Just to make certain of it there came a double spurt of yellow-red flame, the whispering scream of shot ricocheting from the road and then the blam-blam of the explosions. Solo left the gas and trod on the brake, hoping that Illya was clear.

The enemy truck halted some three yards clear on the opposite side of the road, and two large men leaped from the back, each clutching a gun. Lights winked out, the engine died and two more large men scrambled from the cab, also armed. As if they’d rehearsed it, one man marched ahead of the rest, came across and jammed the twin barrels of his shotgun through the side window to within an inch of Solo’s nose.

“Hold everything right there!” he commanded. “I want to have a bit of a talk with you, about some beer consignments.” Then, all at once, his bull-necked superconfidence shivered and broke and his dark-jowled face came close, to peer into the cab over his weapon.

“Holy Mother of Michael!” he breathed. “It’s Miss Sarah, isn’t it? What the devil are you doing here?”

“There now, Dan Finnegan!” she complained. “You’ve spoiled it, after all the trouble we’ve taken to be secret about it.”

“About what?”

“Why, Mr. Solo and me. We went the long way round especially so everyone would think we’d gone off to Tipperary or some such place, so that we—could sneak back into Limerick and get married. And now you’ve spoiled it. You’ll tell Uncle Mike, won’t you?”

“Hold it!” Finnegan protested, furrowing his face. “What’s all this about getting married? It’s the first I’ve heard of it!”

“Me too!” Solo put in, picking up his wits and determined to confuse the issue still further. “It’s all a pack of lies. She was running away from home, and I’m bringing her back. As a matter of fact I’m glad to see you. She’s a bit too much for me, on my own. I could use some—”

“Shut up!” Finnegan emphasized his remark with a jerk of the gun, and then scowled at Sarah. “If you’re getting married”—he struggled to grasp the sense of the tale—”then why did you come belting into the plant this evening and take something away out of the laboratory?—tell me that! O’Connor saw you, with his own eyes. And what did ye do to them beer trucks?” He got to the main point at last, with a bellow. Sarah manufactured a hysterical giggle, and Solo’s hand began to itch for his gun. The charade couldn’t hold up much longer. The other three stalwarts were spread in a ring, all aimed at the truck. Where was Illya?

All at once the night stillness was shattered by a frantic fusillade of shots, as if half a dozen men had opened up from at least three different spots a few yards to the rear. Solo felt the hair crawl on the back of his neck. This was a good place to be away from, fast. The three sentinels obviously felt the same way. With a silent celerity that spoke of training they melted briskly into the hedgerows on either side.

The shots kept coming, in ragged profusion. Finnegan cast a worried glance back and around. Solo wanted no more than that. He grabbed the door handle, slammed it down and kicked the door open, all in one savage movement. The shotgun barrel, trapped in the swinging door, exerted a sudden and painful leverage on Finnegan, jerking him off balance and against the hood of the truck. Solo squirmed out, grabbed at the barrel and rammed the butt into Finnegan’s stomach. The big man, breath gasping from him, folded forward, getting his face square in the way of the butt once more as Solo jerked it up. He went back and down into the road and rolled over.

Solo threw the shotgun away with one hand, drew his pistol with the other, and peered around in the gloom. The gun must have been cocked, because both barrels let go with a double blast as it struck the ground. The distant shots broke out again, furiously, and Solo felt the air around him thicken with flying lead. Then he heard a shrill and raucous yell that seemed to come from somewhere just ahead. He remembered Illya’s warning, scrambled up into the truck again, gunned the engine and got the truck rolling. Within yards a dark figure rose out of the night and flung itself at the off-side door.