A Reply by Wire.
THE trial of the Thunderbolt was an entire success. As Stanley Downs
had said, the car was tuned to perfection, while he, the driver, was as
good as his machine. The two worked together like one organism.
There were several hundred people at the speedway to see the trial,
although it was not a public exhibition. The spectators included
drivers of other cars, mechanicians, officers of the speedway—including
the manager, Colonel Frank Prentiss—and other persons who were
connected in various ways with the track and the race that was to take
place on Thursday.
Stanley did not push his car too hard, but he went over the two miles
in a minute and twenty seconds, which was at the rate of ninety miles
an hour. This admitted the car to the cup race, the requirement being a
speed of not less than eighty-five miles an hour.
When the trial was over, and as soon as he could get away from the
swarm of interested people who crowded about the car after it had
passed the judges’ stand and been declared qualified, Stanley left the
track and made his way to the garage, where he turned the Thunderbolt
over to his mechanician.
He had had a telegram from his uncle that morning which he should have
answered before—only that he did not know what to say. It disturbed
him so that it was only by desperately concentrating his mind on the
business immediately in hand that he had been enabled to drive in the
trial.
The telegram was brief and to the point. It read as follows:
Have heard that you met with accident in mountains not
far from Poughkeepsie. Is money safe? Answer at once.
RICHARD BURWIN.
“What shall I do about this, Clay?” asked Stanley of his friend, as
the two pored over the telegram in Stanley’s room at the hotel. “The
money is at the bottom of the lake. I suppose it is safe enough, but I
haven’t got it,” he added grimly.
“I suppose you must answer the wire?” observed Varron, with, a
questioning look.
“If you knew my uncle as well as I do,” returned Stanley, “you would
not ask that. Of course I must answer it.”
“Well, then, I’d give him the answer you just now gave me.”
Stanley looked at him, puzzled, for a moment. Then he uttered a short
laugh and shook his head.
“You mean that I shall telegraph him the money is safe?”
“Just that,” replied Clay Varron. “You said yourself it was safe. That
is what he asks.”
“That would be a prevarication. I don’t see how I can say that. He
wouldn’t consider it safe if I told him where it was. No, Clay, I can’t
do it. My uncle is always square with me. I should feel like a crook if
I sent him such a message as that.”
“Well, what will you do? If you tell him the truth, what will be the
consequence?”
“The consequence will be that he will think I am a fool,” answered
Stanley Downs, without hesitation.
“He couldn’t think that, unless he’s a fool himself,” was Clay’s warm
rejoinder. “Come again.”
“Well, he would know that I had failed in a matter where I should have
used extreme care, and I doubt whether he ever would trust me again. I
have fallen down, and there is no getting away from it.”
Stanley Downs strode up and down the room in such a dejected frame of
mind that his friend became indignant.
“What’s the matter with you, Stan? Buck up! You took a risk of your
life to save a girl, and you did what any man ought to do. The fact
that some of them would have held back is nothing to do with the case.
When you knew that that crazy kid cousin of mine was driving straight
to a horrible death, you followed her up and brought her through. If
you call that ‘falling down,’ or behaving like a fool, then I can only
say I wish there were more fools like you in the world.”
Stanley Downs placed his two hands affectionately on the shoulders of
his loyal friend and looked him in the eyes, as he asked earnestly:
“Clay, now, on the level, would you ask me to tell a deliberate lie to
my uncle, who has always been straight with me—who has been indeed more
than a father—and who would fight any man who dared even to hint that I
would juggle with the truth? Would you?”
Clay Varron coughed in embarrassment. Then he answered, in as earnest a
voice as Stanley’s own:
“Of course you can’t do it, Stan. But I don’t know what to advise you
to telegraph him. I don’t, by gosh!”
“There is only one way out of it that I can see,” declared Stanley,
after a few minutes’ cogitation. “That is, to evade his question for
the present. I am in hopes that after Thursday I shall be able to go to
New York with the money.”
“You will, old man,” was Clay’s eager response. “You’ll win that race
and have twenty thousand dollars, to replace what you have lost. I
am sure of that. I believed it before I saw the trial to-day. Now I
_know_ there is nothing can beat the Thunderbolt, with you at the
wheel. This Columbiad may be a good car. I believe it is. But, the cars
being equal—and I have no idea that the Columbiad is _better_ than the
Thunderbolt, you are a better driver than Burnham. That will give you
just the ‘edge’ you require to come in first. Your judgment in driving
will beat Burnham, as sure as that the sun will rise to-morrow morning.”
There was no resisting the enthusiasm of Clay Varron. A smile broke
over Stanley’s troubled countenance, and it was with a feeling of
confidence that he took up a pad of telegraph blanks from a table to
write a message to Richard Burwin.
He was some little time composing the telegram. At last, however, he
had written what he thought would be the best thing, and he read it to
Clay, in the following words:
Am detained in Buffalo until after the automobile race
on Thursday. Have business with Colonel Prentiss. Will
come to New York on Friday. All well.
STANLEY DOWNS.
“That ‘All well’ is a good touch,” approved Clay Varron. “It is the
truth, too. When you have driven this race, everything will be well,
and you will go down to New York with your twenty thousand dollars.
Then you can tell your uncle about it, if you like.”
“I certainly shall tell him. I am in hopes that, if there is no loss,
he will forgive me——”
“For taking a chance on being drowned to save a girl, eh?” interrupted
Clay. “Well, if he doesn’t forgive you he will have a hard time
explaining to his conscience. Going to take that telegram downstairs
and have it sent, or will you telephone for a boy to be sent here?”
asked Clay.
“I think I’ll walk around with it to the office. Then I shall know it
gets off right away,” decided Stanley. “Will you dine with me to-night?”
“Can’t, dear boy,” answered Clay. “I’ve promised to take dinner with
the Ranfelts, at their hotel. Then we are going to a theater. By the
way, you were invited, too—weren’t you?”
“Yes. But I begged off. I knew this telegram was here, and, to tell the
truth, I didn’t feel like talking and seeing a show. There are only
two more clear days before the race, and I think I shall use them in
resting, except when I am exercising the Thunderbolt on the speedway. I
want to get used to that track.”
“There is not much to be learned about it. I should think,” said
Vernon. “It is almost a counterpart of the speedway at Sheepshead.
Two-mile oval, with two half-mile straightaways and two half-mile
turns.”
“Yes, I know all that,” interrupted Stanley. “And at the curves the
outside edges rise to twenty-five feet. The track is seventy feet
wide. You see, I have all its dimensions. I even know that it is built
of two-by-four pine, laid on edge. But all that means little to a man
in a big race, unless he has practiced again and again. No matter how
smooth a track may seem to be, there are sure to be little kinks that a
driver should know.”
“In what way are there kinks?”
“Little waves where the going rises slightly—almost imperceptibly—and
yet which will make a fast-running car swerve. You know that, Clay. You
are an automobilist.”
Clay Varron nodded. He did, indeed, understand how slight an
obstruction will change the course of a motor car when going at high
speed. There could be no argument as to the wisdom of a driver trying
out the track as often as possible.
“Of course. Stan, it would be foolish in you to neglect all possible
precautions. So I suppose it was wise for you to pass up this
dinner-and-show game to-night. There’ll be supper after the theater, of
course, and I dare say it will be two o’clock in the morning, if not
later, before the fair-haired boy who is talking to you will sink upon
his downy pillow.”
“Drivers in three-hundred-and-fifty-mile cup races should not stay up
till two in the morning,” said Stanley, with a laugh. “So I have plenty
of excuse for not being with you to-night.”
“Another thing, Stan, that might have decided you to remain away is
that Victor Burnham will be in the party. I don’t believe you like him
any more than I do. Besides, he will be your principal opponent in the
race, I think, and you wouldn’t want to talk about it, I know.”
“But he would, I guess?”
“Sure! He’s just the kind of bounder who would try to get your goat by
talking about the difficulties of the thing, and wondering whether
your car will stand the racket.”
“That would be very unsportsmanlike,” remarked Stanley, with a shrug.
“Of course. That’s why Burnham would do it. He’s a scalawag through and
through, Stan. I know that. I’ve met him before. And, I tell you, old
man, when you are in the race, you want to look out for him. If there
is anything he can do to foul you, that’s what he’ll do.”
Stanley Downs laughed disdainfully.
“There isn’t much chance of a driver fouling another in an automobile
race without his risking his own neck, as well as the other fellow’s,
Clay. I can take care of myself when once we are going.”
“I reckon so,” agreed Clay Varron. “Well, I’ll walk with you as far as
the telegraph office. We’ll take those back streets. They are a short
cut. You know the way, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Come on!”
The two young men walked briskly from the hotel, and in ten minutes
Stanley was handing in his telegram, telling the clerk to send an
answer, if there should be one, to the hotel.
Clay Varron had left his friend at the door of the telegraph office,
and was on his way to his room, to dress for the dinner to which he had
been invited.
When the message had been filed and paid for, Stanley came out alone
and strolled along busy Main Street for several blocks, thinking of
the strange curve of the ball of fate that had brought him to Buffalo
again, to become a driver in this great race.
“If I weren’t so worried about that money, I should enjoy the
experience, just for itself,” he murmured. “As it is, I am so anxious
to win that it may be the cause of my defeat. Defeat? No, sir! I _must_
win!”
He was so taken up with his thoughts that he never noticed two rather
under-sized youths, with the furtive air and in the flashily cut cheap
clothing peculiar to the underworld class, known as “gangsters” in
most large American cities, who kept always at the same short distance
behind him, and who never let him out of their sight.