In this way, going at full speed, and now and again slowing down to inquire, he got over a good many miles.

He was frightened when he went through a town lest the police should try to stop him, but it seemed that they had received no such instructions from Ventimiglia.

All the while he was drawing nearer the carriage, for all that, somewhere or other, it had plainly changed horses.
At last he made up his mind that he would overtake it in the next seven miles; and he bucketed the car along for all she was worth.

At the end of the seven miles he had not overtaken it, nor was there any appearance of it on the road before him, a level stretch of two miles.
However, he ran on another five miles, and there was no sign of it, nor had anyone he passed or met, seen it.

Plainly he had overshot it.
He turned the car, and came back, stopping to examine branch roads for its wheel-tracks, losing the ground he had made up.