Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XII HOW WE EXCHANGE SHOTS WITH THE PIRATE After the sudden flurry which the reappearance of the Motor Pirate caused, and quite as much in the country at large as in my own particular circle, we settled down once again to a condition of comparative quietude. Of course there were plenty of facts to keep the public interest alive and to fill the papers. The adjourned inquest on the victim found near Towcester supplied columns of copy, while the robbery of the Brighton Mail afforded unlimited scope for the descriptive reporter as well as for the special crime investigator, who at this time made his permanent appearance on the staff of nearly every paper of any importance in the British Isles. My life at home was made a burden to me by these gentlemen. I bear them no malice for their persevering attempts to interview me, but they were an unmitigated nuisance, since I had no wish to air my experiences in the newspapers at this stage of affairs. It was with the utmost difficulty I escaped the attentions of the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate, for they even waited on my doorstep for the chance of button-holing me when I went out in the morning; and pursued me so assiduously, that I dared not look a stranger in the face, lest my glance should be translated into a column of glowing prose. I have said that the Pirate left no clue to his identity upon his latest appearance, and, indeed, at the time, such was the opinion both of Forrest and myself. But in the light of after events we learned that there was a clue, had we been keen-witted enough to have discovered it. In the course of our inquiries around Crawley, we certainly did not succeed in finding any one who had observed the mysterious car which every one had learned to associate with the Pirate, but we had been told c...