MILLINGTON and I hunted up the automobile the next day, and it was in
worse condition than I had imagined. The only way the car could be got
back to his garage was on a truck, but we got it there, and unloaded
it, and Millington hunted up all his tools and got them ready to use the
next day. It was late by that time, and we locked the garage and went to
bed.
All night I worried over having taken two dollars and forty-five
cents from Millington for that collection of old metal that had been a
motor-car, and as early as possible the next morning I took the money
and went over to Millington's. I found him just going out to the garage,
and he positively refused to take back the money. He said the car was
in just the condition he wanted it, and that if I hadn't knocked the
witchery out of it no one could. He said he hoped--and just then he
opened the garage door.
There stood the automobile, on the very spot where we had left it, but
there was not a scratch on it. Except that it was an ancient model, it
might have been a brand new car. Even the brasswork had been polished,
and at the first glance the tires seemed new, but we found they had only
been carefully repaired and painted drab.
Millington stood looking at the automobile a few minutes and then
laughed. He turned to me with a strangely contorted face and said:
“Uncle Tom, you are invited to take a ride with Cleopatra in my air-ship
to-night at midnight.”
Millington said this in a very calm voice, but he immediately followed
it by asking me to have a piece of strawberry pie, and instead of pie he
offered me the can of gear grease. I managed to coax him into the
house, and when the doctor arrived he advised absolute rest. He said
Millington's brain was not yet permanently affected, but that another
such shock would be too much for him. He said that for the present we
must humour him, and try to make him believe that the automobile was
damaged beyond recovery. It seemed to have a soothing effect, and to aid
his recovery I got into the car, ran it into the street, aimed it at a
stone wall opposite Millington's window, threw on the high speed, and
jumped to one side. One minute later the machine was afire, and half
an hour later little was left of it but the metal parts, and they were
badly warped.
Mr. Prawley came out when he saw the fire, and a look of the most
fiendish joy glittered in his eyes. Never have I seen a man show
such pleasure over the destruction of an automobile. His hatred of
automobiles seemed to be endless and bottomless.
When I told Millington that his automobile was now in about as bad
condition as man could put it into, he sat up in bed, and the light of
sanity came into his eyes. He walked to the window and looked out at the
car, and became his old cheerful self again. He said that there was no
doubt now that the devils in the car had been exorcised, and that with
a few weeks work he could get it back into such shape that the engine
would be working properly, and we would then, he said take that little
run up to Port Lafayette. He then took a little nourishment, and by
night he was quite himself again. When he had had his dinner I went home
and had mine, and went to bed at once, for I knew Millington would be at
work soon after sun-up.
I had hardly got into bed, however, when I began to fear that
Millington's eagerness would get the best of him, and at ten o'clock I
went over to his house. I found him in bed and awake and cheerful, but
he said he did not mean to get up. He said it was against his policy to
get up the day before in order to be up the next day, so I sat by his
bed and read chapters from a dear little work of fiction entitled “Easy
Remedies for Ignition Troubles,” until the clock struck twelve, and then
Millington hopped out of bed and threw on his clothes.
The moment we stepped from the back door the same thing struck us both
with surprise. There was a light in the garage!
My first thought was that some rascal was in the garage trying to
ruin Millington's automobile, but a second thought assured me this was
impossible. Ruin could be carried no farther than I had carried it.
Bidding Millington be silent, I crept cautiously toward the garage, with
Millington at my heels, and without a sound we peered in at the window.
The sight was one that would have shaken the strongest man.
Bending over the motor, with his face made unearthly by the artificial
light that fell upon it obliquely, casting deep shadows, was that
villain, Mr. Prawley! I have never seen anything so devilish as that
wretch as he worked with inhuman agility and haste. His long, claw-like
fingers danced from one part of the machine to another fiendishly, and a
hideous grin distorted his features. He was humming some weird tune, and
I noted that he was ambidextrous, for he was varnishing the hood with
one hand while with the other he was putting in a new spark plug. A
tremor of horror passed over Millington and over me at the same moment.
A few whispered words, a few stealthy steps, and we burst in and seized
Mr. Prawley by the arms. In a moment we had him on the floor of the
garage, bound hand and foot.
Millington was for wreaking immediate vengeance on him, but I stood
firmly for a more lawful course, and the next day we handed him over to
the authorities, and his whole miserable story came out. His name was
not Mr. Prawley at all. Neither was it Alonzo Duggs, which was the name
he he had given us when Isobel and I hired him. His name was William
Alexander Vandergribbin. He came of good family, but mania for speeding
automobiles had brought him to ruin, and the third time he was arrested
for over-speeding a sentence of thirty years in the penitentiary had
been pronounced by the judge. The judge, however, had suspended the
sentence provided that William Alexander Vandergribbin never again
touched an automobile.
For several years Vandergribbin fought down his appetite. Then he
fell. He changed his name to Flossy Zozo, and secured a job as the
death-defying loop-the-gappist with the big show. For a time the
speeding down the runway in the fake automobile, with the somersault at
the bottom of the run, appeased his cravings, but the rules of the
show prohibited him from tinkering with the fake automobile, which was
strictly in charge of the property man, and Vandergribbin left the show,
changed his name to Alonzo Duggs, and seeking our quiet town, chose work
in the house nearest the man owning the oldest automobile. For weeks he
had watched his opportunity--you know the rest. He is now in Sing Sing.
I am sorry to end this story so abruptly, but Millington has just
come over to ask if I would not like to take a little run out to Port
Lafayette. I have always wanted to go to Port Lafayette, which is about
eleven miles from here; so, if you will excuse me, I will go and button
Isobel's matinee gown, and we will be off.