Under Cliff's direction, that afternoon Johnny did what a woman would
call shopping. He bought among other things a suit of khaki such as
city dwellers wear when they go into the wilds. Cliff had told him
that he must not appear among people in the clothes of a flyer, but
must be a duck hunter and none other when they left Los Angeles. When
that would be, Johnny did not know; nor did he know where they were
going. But a duck hunter he faithfully tried to resemble when he let
Cliff into his room at five o'clock in the evening, which meant after
the lights were on in the quiet hallways of the Alexandria, and the
streets were all aglow. Cliff looked, if not like a hunter, at least
picturesque in high, laced boots and olive-drab trousers and coat that
had a military cut.
"Fine! We'll get under way and eat somewhere along the road, if you
don't mind. What about that mechanic? Has he shown up yet?" Cliff's
boredom was gone, along with his swagger stick.
"Naw. I guess the little runt went on a spree. I thought he'd be here
when I got back, but he wasn't, and the clerk said nobody had called
for me except you."
"All the better. You won't have to bother explaining to him without
telling him anything. If you ever do run across him, give him a
temperance talk--and the boot. That will be convincing, without your
needing to furnish any other reason for letting him out. By the
way,"--reaching casually into a pocket,--"here is your first week's
salary. The boss made it fifteen hundred a week, straight. And he
said to tell you he would add a hundred every week that you deliver the
goods. That is giving a tremendously square deal, in my opinion. But
it's the boss's way, to make it worth a man's while to do his level
best."
Round-eyed, Johnny took the roll of bank notes and flipped the ends
with eager fingers. Golly! One with five hundred on it--he had never
seen a five-hundred-dollar bill in his life, until this one. And
fifties--six or seven of them, and four one-hundreds, and the rest in
twenties and three or four tens for easy spending. He had a keen
desire to show that roll to Mary V, and ask her whether he could make
money flying, or whether she would still advise him to go to work for
her dad! Why, right there in his hand was more money than Sudden
thought he was worth in a year, and this was just one week's salary!
Why, good gosh! In another week he could pay that note, and start
right in getting rich. Why, in a month he could own a car like
Cliff's. Why--
Cliff, watching him with sophisticated understanding of the dazzling
effect of so much money upon a youth who had probably never before seen
fifteen hundred dollars in one lump, smiled to himself. Whatever small
voice of doubt Johnny had hearkened to, the voice would now be hushed
under the soft whisper of the money fluttering in Johnny's fingers.
"Well, I'll call a porter to get these things down so you can settle
for the room. You had better just check out without leaving any word
of where you're going." Cliff turned to the 'phone.
"That'll be easy, seeing I don't know," Johnny retorted, crowding the
money into his old wallet that bulged like the cheeks of a pocket
gopher, busy enlarging his house.
"Fine," Cliff flung sardonically over his shoulder. He called for a
porter to remove the luggage from room six-seventy-eight, and laid his
fingers around the door knob. "I'll be down at the S.P. depot waiting
for you, Jewel. There's a train in half an hour going north, so it
will be plausible enough for you to take a taxi to the depot. Go
inside, just as though you were leaving, see. And when the passengers
come off the train, you join the crowd with your gun case and grip, and
come on out to where I'll he waiting. Can you do that?"
"I guess I can, unless somebody runs over me on the way."
"Then I'll be going. The point is, we must not leave here
together--even on a duck hunt!" He smiled and departed, at least three
minutes before the porter tapped for admission.
There was no hitch, although there was a margin of safety narrow enough
to set Johnny's blood tingling. He had "checked out" and had called
his taxi and watched the porter load in gun case and grip, had tipped
him lavishly and had slipped a dollar into the willing palm of the
doorman, when he leaned in to get the address to give the driver. And
then, just as the taxi was moving on, over the doorman's shoulder
Johnny distinctly saw Bland turn in between the rubber plants that
guarded the doorway. A pasty-faced, dull-eyed Bland, cheaply
resplendent in new tan shoes, a new suit of that pronounced blue loved
by Mexican dandies, a new red-and-blue striped tie, and a new soft hat
of bottle-green velour.
For ten seconds Johnny was scared, which was a new sensation. For
longer than that he had a guilty consciousness of having
"double-crossed" a partner. He had a wild impulse to stop the taxi and
sprint back to the hotel after Bland, and give him fifty dollars or so
as a salve to his conscience, even though he could not take him into
this new enterprise or even tell him what it was. Uncomfortably his
memory visioned that other day (was it only yesterday morning? It
seemed impossible!) when he had wandered forlornly out to the hangar in
Tucson and had found Bland true to his trust when he might so easily
have been false; when everything would seem to encourage him to be
false. How much, after all, did Johnny owe to Bland Halliday? Just
then he seemed to owe Bland everything.
It was all well enough for him to argue that his debt to Bland had been
paid when he brought him to Los Angeles, and that Bland could have no
just complaint if Johnny declined to continue the partnership longer.
Bland, he told himself, would have quit him cold any time some other
chance looked better. It was Johnny's plane, and Johnny had a right to
do as he pleased with it.
For all that, Johnny rode to the S.P. depot feeling like a criminal
trying to escape. He took his luggage and sneaked into the waiting
room, sought an inconspicuous place and waited, his whole head and
shoulders hidden behind a newspaper which he was not reading. Cliff
Lowell could have found nothing to criticize in Johnny's manner of
screening his presence there; though he would probably have been
surprised at Johnny's reason for doing so. Johnny himself was
surprised, bewildered even. That he, who had lorded over Bland with
such patronizing contempt, should actually be afraid of meeting the
little runt!
A stream of hurrying people, distinguished from others by their seeking
glances and haste and luggage, warned him presently that he would be
expected outside. He picked up his belongings and joined the
procession, but he came very near missing Cliff altogether. He was
looking for the dark-red roadster that had eaten up distance so
greedily between Inglewood and the city, and he did not see it. He was
standing dismayed, a slim, perturbed young fellow in khaki, with a grip
in one hand and a canvas gun case in the other, when some one touched
him on the arm. He needed the second glance to tell him it was Cliff,
and even then it was the smooth, bored voice that convinced him. Cliff
wore a motor coat that covered him from chin to heels, a leather cap
pulled down over his ears, and driving goggles as concealing as a mask.
He led the way to a touring car that looked like any other touring
car--except to a man who could know the meaning of that high, long,
ventilated hood and the heavy axles and wheels, and the general air of
power and endurance, that marked it a thoroughbred among cars. The
tonneau, Johnny saw as he climbed in, was packed tight with what looked
like a camp outfit. His own baggage was crowded in somehow, and the
side curtains, buttoned down tight, hid the load from passers-by.
Cliff pulled his coat close around his legs, climbed in, set his heel
on the starter.
A pulsing beat, smooth, hushed, and powerful, answered. Cliff pulled
the gear lever, eased in the clutch, and they slid quietly away down
the street for two blocks, swung to the left and began to pick up speed
through the thinning business district that dwindled presently to
suburban small dwellings.
"Put on that coat and the goggles, old man," Cliff directed, his eyes
on the lookback mirror, searching the highway behind them. "We've got
an all-night drive, and it will be cold later on, so the coat will
serve two purposes. It's hard to identify a man in a passing
automobile if he's wearing a motor coat and goggles. You couldn't
swear to your twin brother going by."
"This is a bear of a car," Johnny glowed, all atingle now with the
adventure and its flavor of mystery. "I didn't know you had two. I
was looking for the red one."
"I forgot to tell you." Which Johnny felt was a lie, because Cliff
Lowell did not strike him as the kind of man who forgot things. "Yes,
I keep two. This is good for long trips when I want to take
luggage--and so on." His tone did not invite further conversation. He
seemed absorbed now in his driving; and his driving, Johnny decided,
was enough to absorb any man. Yard by yard he was sending the
big-nosed car faster ahead, until the pointer on the speedometer seemed
to want to rest on 35. Still, they did not seem to be going so very
fast, except that they overhauled and passed everything else on the
road, and not once did a car overhaul and pass them. Cliff glanced
often into the mirror, watching the road behind them for the single
speeding light of a motor cop--because Los Angeles County, as you are
probably aware, does not favor thirty-five miles an hour for
automobiles, but has fixed upon twenty-five as a safe and sane speed at
which the general public may travel.
But Cliff was wary, chance favored them with fairly clear roads, and
the miles slid swiftly behind. They ate at San Juan Capistrano not
much past the hour which Johnny had all his life thought of as supper
time. Cliff filled the gas tank, gave the motor a pint of oil and the
radiator about a quart of water, turned up a few grease cups and
applied the nose of the oil can here and there to certain bearings. He
did it all with the fastidious air of a prince democratically inclined
to look after things himself, the air which permeated his whole
personality and made Johnny continue calling him Mr. Lowell, in spite
of a life-long habit of applying nicknames even to chance acquaintances.
Cliff climbed in and settled himself. "We want to make it in time to
get some hunting at daylight," he observed in a tone which included the
fellow at the service station who was just pocketing his money for the
gas and oil. "I think we can, with luck."
Luck seemed to mean speed and more speed, The headlights bored a white
pathway through the dark, and down that pathway the car hummed at a
fifty-mile clip where the road was straight. Johnny got thrills of
which his hardy nerves had never dreamed themselves capable. Riding
the sky in the Thunder Bird was tame to the point of boredom, compared
with riding up and over and down and around a squirmy black line with
the pound of the Pacific in his ears and the steady beat of the motor
blending somehow with it, and the tingle of uncertainty as to whether
they would make the next sharp curve on two wheels as successfully as
they had made the last. Mercifully, they met no one on the hills.
There were straight level stretches just beyond reach of the tide, and
sometimes two eyes would glare at them, growing bigger and bigger.
There would be a _swoo--sh_ as a dark object shot by with mere inches
to spare, and the eyes would glare no longer. By golly, Johnny would
have a car or know the reason why! He'd bet he could drive one as well
as Cliff Lowell too, once he had the feel of the thing.
"Too fast for you?" Cliff asked once, and Johnny felt the little
tolerant smile he could not see.
"Too fast? Say, I'm used to _flying_!" Johnny shouted back, ready to
die rather than own the tingling of his scalp for fear. He expected
Cliff to let her out still more, after that tacit dare, but Cliff did
not for two reasons: he was already going as fast as he could and keep
the road, and he was convinced that Johnny Jewel had hardened every
nerve in his system with skyriding.
Oceanside was but a sprinkle of lights and a blur of houses when they
slipped through at slackened speed, lest their passing be noted
curiously and remembered too well. On again, over the upland and down
once more to the very sand where the waves rocked and boomed under the
stars. Up and around and over and down--Johnny wondered how much
farther they would hurl themselves through the night. Straight out
along a narrow streak of asphalt toward lights twinkling on a blur of
hillside. Up and around with a skidding turn to the right, and Del Mar
was behind them. Down and around and along another straight line next
the sands, and up a steep grade whose windings slowed even this brute
of a car to a saner pace.
"This is Torrey Pine grade," Cliff informed him. "It isn't much
farther to the next stop. I've been making time, because from San
Diego on we have rougher going. This is not the most direct route we
could have taken, but it's the best, seeing I have to stop in San Diego
and complete certain arrangements. And then, too, it is not always
wise to take a direct route to one's destination. Not--always." He
slowed for a rickety bridge and added negligently, "We've made pretty
fair time."
"I'd say we have. You've been doing fifty part of the time."
"And part of the time I haven't. From here on it's rough."
From there on it was that, and more. There had been a rain storm which
the asphalt had long forgotten but the dirt road recorded with ruts and
chuck-holes half filled with mud. The big car weathered it without
breaking a spring, and before the tiredest laborer of San Diego had
yawned and declared it was bedtime, they chuckled sedately into San
Diego and stopped on a side street where a dingy garage stood open to
the greasy sidewalk.
Cliff turned in there and whistled. A lean figure in grease-blackened
coveralls came out of the shadows, and Cliff climbed down.
"I want to use your 'phone a minute. Go over the car, will you, until
I come back. Where can I spot her--out of the way?"
The man waved a hand toward a space at the far end, and Cliff returned
to his seat and dexterously placed the car, nose to the wall.
"You may as well stay right here. I'll not be gone long. You might
curl down and take a nap."
It was not an order, but Johnny felt that he was expected to keep
himself out of sight, and the suggestion to nap appealed to him. He
found a robe and covered himself, and went to sleep with the readiness
of a cat curled behind a warm stove. He did not know how long it was
before Cliff woke him by pulling upon the car door. He did not
remember that the garage man had fussed much with the car, though he
might have done it so quietly that Johnny would not hear him. The man
was standing just outside the door, and presently he signalled to
Cliff, and Cliff backed out into the empty street. He nodded to the
man and drove on to the corner, turned and went a block, and turned
again. The streets seemed very quiet, so Johnny supposed that it was
late, though the clock set in the instrument board was not running.
They went on, out of the town and into a road that wound up long hills
and down to the foot of others which it straightway climbed. Cliff did
not drive so fast now, though their speed was steady. Twice he stopped
to walk over to some house near the road and have speech with the
owner. He was inquiring the way, he explained to Johnny, who did not
believe him; Cliff drove with too much certainty, seemed too familiar
with certain unexpected twists in the road, to be a stranger upon it,
Johnny thought. But he did not say anything--it was none of his
business. Cliff was running this part of the show, and Johnny was
merely a passenger. His job was flying, when the time came to fly.
After a while he slid farther down into the seat and slept.