An Enemy by Chance.
FRANTICALLY, Stanley Downs searched all over the interior of the big
car. It did not seem to be much damaged, although it was soaked with
water and showed mud where it had struck the bottom of the lake.
There were no signs of the packet of money. The door pocket seemed to
have been wrenched open, and it was easy to imagine that the money
might have slipped out as the machine tumbled over.
For a few moments Stanley could hardly realize the full extent of his
misfortune. He soon made sure that the package was not lying anywhere
in the car. Karl, too, searched carefully, without result.
“Get the car to the road as soon as you can, Karl,” directed Stanley,
forcing himself to speak calmly. “Then run it into the garage and
overhaul it. We shall probably go on to New York to-day.”
“Very well, sir.”
“How about the other car, the Fanchon? Are they going to get it up
without much trouble?”
“I think so,” replied Karl. “But it was underneath our car, and it may
take all day. I’m afraid there isn’t much left of the Fanchon. Bits of
it are floating on the water. You can see some of the wooden spokes of
the wheels, and one of the mud guards came up on the grappling irons a
while ago.”
“My poor car!” exclaimed a sweet voice behind them. “You really think
it is done for, then?”
“Why, Helen!” cried Clay Varron, swinging around. “Were you driving
that Fanchon? What the deuce made you do it? I have often heard your
father tell you that you must never drive a new car until he has tested
it thoroughly himself.”
“Well, I tested this one for him,” laughed Helen Ranfelt. “I don’t
think he will have any more trouble with it. If it had not been for
this gentleman,” smiling at Stanley, “he might not have had any more
trouble with his daughter, either.”
“It was a perilous proceeding all around,” said Stanley. “But I am
relieved to see that it had no serious outcome—except for the car. By
the way, Clay,” he went on, turning to Varron, “perhaps you won’t mind
vouching for me as a respectable member of society to Miss——”
“What? Never been introduced?” cried Clay, astonished. “Well, well!
This is Mr. Stanley Downs, of New York—Miss Helen Ranfelt. You know her
father, L. K. Ranfelt—Stanley, by name, at least. There is their home
up there on the mountain. You can just see it through the foliage—that
white house, with the golden cupola.”
“Of course I have heard of Mr. Ranfelt,” returned Stanley, when he
had acknowledged the introduction with a bow, and had absorbed a most
fascinating smile from the young lady. “Who has not? His mines in
Nevada——”
“Oh, yes!” broke in Helen Ranfelt. “That is always the way. Everybody
has heard that dad has made many millions out of his mines, and that
they are still producing. But hardly any one knows that he would be a
great man, even if he had never got to be a millionaire. You ought to
see _him_ drive a Fanchon, Mr. Downs—or any other car! No fear of his
driving into a lake. He makes a car do just what he likes. And it is
the same with everything else he does.”
Clay Varron smiled approvingly.
“That’s so, Helen. He’s a mighty smart man, and I’ll say it, even
though he _is_ my uncle. By the way, now that I’ve met you, I guess
I’ll drive you home—if you want to go. I haven’t seen Uncle Larry for
more than a year.”
“I heard that you’ve lost something from your car, Mr. Downs,” said
Helen. “Some money. Don’t you think you can recover it?”
“I’m afraid not,” was the doleful reply. “The lake is fifty feet deep
right here, and much more as it approaches the center. It was a bundle
of bank notes, wrapped up in paper. The water would destroy them in
a very short time, and there is little chance of dredging up the
fragments. No, I’m afraid it is a dead loss.”
“I am very sorry.”
Her feminine tact told her it would be better to say nothing more about
it. The square jaw of Stanley Downs, as well as the fighting glint in
his gray eyes, suggested that he would deal with the misfortune in his
own way, and that he would not ask for sympathy from any one.
“I shall have to communicate with my uncle, Mr. Burwin, in New York,”
he remarked, after a short pause, during which it struck him that he
should make some acknowledgment of her expression of sorrow. “The money
was his, and I was taking it to our bank.”
“Burwin & Son, you know, Helen,” interjected Varron.
“I did think I would go directly to New York,” continued Stanley. “But
I think I will call him up on ‘long distance,’ and stay here till I
find out whether I can save any of the bills.”
“Nothing much can be done to-day, I should say,” observed Varron.
“You will have to get dredging machinery from somewhere—Poughkeepsie,
probably. That will take at least twenty-four hours, by the time it is
all set up.”
“Won’t you be my father’s guest for to-night, Mr. Downs?” asked Helen.
“He will be pleased to see you, especially when he hears that you have
saved his daughter’s life. I am a great deal of a nuisance to him, but
he thinks something of me, nevertheless.”
“Well, I should say he does!” laughed Clay Varron. “Helen makes him do
just what she wants. I don’t think anybody else on earth could do that.”
The end of it all was that Stanley Downs accepted Helen Ranfelt’s
invitation, and about six o’clock that evening Clay Varron drove his
big car under the porte-cochère of Lawrence K. Ranfelt’s castlelike
mansion on a mountaintop, to let Stanley jump down to help out the
young girl who had been by his side during the ride up from the lake,
the glimmer of which could be made out miles below.
Karl had been instructed to watch the attempts to get the package of
bills from the water, and to let Stanley know by telephone if there
should be any result. The stolid chauffeur could be depended on. His
faithfulness had been proved in years of service, and his honesty was
beyond question.
Under the influence of a good dinner and cheerful conversation, Stanley
was able to look upon his heavy loss with a more hopeful eye afterward.
Lawrence K. Ranfelt was a man of fifty or thereabouts, with a jolly
manner, a clean-cut, shaven face, and grip when he shook hands that
conveyed sincerity that won Stanley’s confidence at once.
What particularly pleased Stanley Downs was that his host did not say
much about the part Stanley had taken in saving his daughter from
death. All he did was to shake the young man’s hand and whisper, after
a ten minutes’ talk alone with his daughter:
“Helen has told me, Mr. Downs. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
That sounds stupidly inadequate, but I mean it. She says that if you
had not dragged her from the car down there at the bottom of the
lake, she must have been drowned. You had opened the door before the
accident, so that she could get out. That was something everybody might
not have thought of. But even then she would have died if it had not
been for what you did afterward.”
This was just before dinner, after Stanley had put on evening clothes
from Clay Varron’s rather extensive wardrobe, and when the men were in
the library, waiting for the call.
“By the way, Mr. Downs, you have not met Mr. Burnham—Victor Burnham,”
added Ranfelt, as a tall, lean man, who might have been any age between
thirty and fifty, but who really was thirty-five, slipped into the
library. “Burnham has been associated with me in the West for years.
He was my superintendent when I made my first good strike, and he is
still looking out for the Ranfelt interests in the West. But he is not
a mere superintendent now. His holdings in Nevada mines have made him
a millionaire several times over. At least, that’s what people say. Eh,
Burnham?”
Victor Burnham shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly, as he shook hands
with Stanley in a rather grudging fashion.
“People say many things that would be better unsaid!” he growled. “My
private affairs are my own.”
Lawrence K. Ranfelt turned away, with a careless laugh. He knew the
saturnine disposition of his old-time assistant, and never took notice
of his surly manner. But Stanley Downs decided, in his own mind, that
he didn’t like Victor Burnham.
They went in to dinner now, and Stanley was seated by the side of
Helen. Not only that, but the young lady gave him as much of her
attention and conversation as she could, without being actually
discourteous to the other guests. Two handsome girls, her classmates at
Vassar, were in the dinner party.
It was evident that Stanley had made a good impression on Miss Ranfelt.
He, on his part, thoroughly enjoyed himself. He could flirt with a
pretty girl as well as the next one, and Helen Ranfelt was undeniably
extremely pretty.
“What’s the matter with that fellow?” thought Stanley once, when he
happened to look across the table and found Burnham glowering at him.
“Wonder if I’ve given offense to Mr. Burnham?”
The truth was that he had given offense. Victor Burnham had gone so far
as to tell L. K. Ranfelt that he would like to marry his daughter. The
mine owner’s reply was that he could not interfere with her desires in
the way of matrimony. If Helen wanted to marry Burnham, why, he would
consider it, then. For the present, he had nothing to say.
“You give me permission to try for her, then?” Burnham had said.
“Sure! Go in and win—if you can. I can trust Helen to act according to
her conscience.”
This conversation had taken place on this very afternoon, and Burnham
had been trying to make up his mind when he would speak to Helen. Now
in came this young man from New York, who had the advantage of having
rescued her from death, and it was evident that the girl had eyes for
nobody else. Burnham felt that he had good reason for glowering at
Stanley Downs.
It was after dinner, when the four men were in the billiard room,
enjoying cigars and cigarettes before joining the ladies in the
drawing-room, that the subject of the big motor race came up.
“I am interested in it,” remarked Ranfelt casually. “I have a few
thousand dollars invested, and I certainly mean to see it pulled off.
Colonel Frank Prentiss is an old friend of mine, and I have no doubt he
will make it a success. I wish I could drive in the race. It would be
an easy way of picking up twenty thousand dollars, to say nothing of
the cup, which is said to be worth a thousand or so.”
“The Lawrence Cup,” murmured Stanley Downs thoughtfully. “By the way,
Mr. Ranfelt, who is offering the cup? Do you know?”
Lawrence K. Ranfelt brushed the question aside, with a careless wave of
the hand, as he let a column of cigar smoke issue from his lips.
“What does it matter who offers it?” he demanded, with a flush rather
deeper than his usual color on his cheeks, while his keen eyes danced
with amusement. “It will not belong to anybody until it has been won
for three years in succession, on the Prentiss Speedway. Burnham, here,
thinks he can carry it off for the first time.”
“I’ll try,” growled Burnham. “As for the person who offers it, I don’t
see any use in making a mystery of that. It will all come out later.
It is Mr. Ranfelt who is giving it. He uses his first name, Lawrence,
instead of his surname—that’s all.”
Lawrence K. Ranfelt burst out into his jolly laugh, as he slapped
Burnham on the shoulder.
“Yes, that’s true,” he admitted. “But there is something else, much
more interesting than the fact that I have hung up the cup for
competition. That is that Helen has publicly announced—at home, of
course—that she will think the man who wins this cup the greatest hero
she knows.”
“Indeed?” asked Stanley, laughing. “That is enough to make anybody want
to be entered in the race. The twenty thousand dollars would be nothing
in comparison.”
“Well, I don’t know,” declared Ranfelt, more soberly. “That’s a good
sum of money. I have nothing to do with the purse, however. The
Speedway Association, through Colonel Frank Prentiss, is offering that.
And the best of the purse is that it belongs, out and out, to the man
who wins it. He won’t have to go on driving in other races, year after
year, as he will to become the permanent holder of the cup.”
Stanley Downs did not reply. But he was thoughtful, and when he reached
the drawing-room with the others, he had so little to say that Helen
Ranfelt, obviously piqued, was especially gracious to Victor Burnham,
and hardly noticed Stanley at all.
“I believe I’ll do it!” was what Stanley kept on repeating to himself.
He was saying it mentally when he reached his bedroom a few hours
later, and gazed out of the window at the long winding road down the
mountain.
“Seventy miles was Clay Varron’s record in a Kronite car, on that very
road below, there,” he mused. “Seventy miles an hour on an ordinary
road, with all the possibilities of loose stones, holes, and other
cars meeting him. What could a man do in a good car on the Prentiss
Speedway? The record at Sheepshead Bay is more than a hundred and two
for three hundred and fifty miles.” Me sighed dubiously. “That’s some
traveling, keeping it up for more than three hours.”
Stanley Downs went to bed.