THE RACE
Some of the roads on Long Island are magnificent. Many of the speed
laws are strict. The thoroughfare stretching ahead of the two cars was
one of the best.
The traffic regulations suffered absolute demolition.
Like a liberated thing of flame and deviltry, happiest when rocketing
through space, the car beneath the fugitives seemed to bound in the air
as it whirred with a higher and higher hum of wheels and gears, and the
air drove by in torrential force, leaving a cloud of smoke and dust in
their wake.
Dorothy clung to Jerold, half afraid. He raised himself upon the seat
and looked out of the tiny window set in the back. The big car in the
road behind, obscured in the dust that must help to blind its driver,
had lost scarcely more than half a block in picking up its speed.
It, too, was a powerful machine, and its coughing, open exhaust was
adding to the din on the highway. It was trailing smoke in a dense,
bluish cloud that meant they were burning up their lubricant with
spendthrift prodigality. But the monster was running superbly.
The houses seemed scooting by in madness. A team that stood beside the
road dwindled swiftly in perspective. The whir of the gears and the
furious discharge of the used-up gas seemed increasing momentarily.
The whole machine was rocking as it sped, yet the big red pursuer was
apparently gaining by degrees.
Garrison nodded in acknowledgment of the fact that the car behind, with
almost no tonneau and minus the heavy covered superstructure, offered
less resistance to the wind. With everything else made equal, and
accident barred, the fellow at the wheel behind would overhaul them yet.
He looked out forward. The road was straight for at least a mile. He
beheld a bicycle policeman, riding ahead, to develop his speed, with
the certain intention of calling to his driver to stop.
Half a minute later the car was abreast the man on the wheel, who
shrieked out his orders on the wind. Garrison leaned to the tube that
ended by the chauffeur's ear.
"Go on--give her more if she's got it!" he said. "I'll take care of
the fines!"
The driver had two notches remaining on his spark advance. He thumbed
the lever forward, and the car responded with a trifle more of speed.
It was straining every bolt and nut to its utmost capacity of strength.
The bicycle officer, clinging half a minute to a hope made forlorn by
his sheer human lack of endurance, drifted to rearward with the dust.
Once more Garrison peered out behind. The big red demon, tearing down
the road, was warming to its work. With cylinders heating, and her
mixture therefore going snappily as a natural result, she too had taken
on a slight accession of speed. Two meteors, flung from space across
the earth's rotundity, could scarcely have been more exciting than
these liberated chariots of power.
There was no time to talk; there was scarcely time to think. The road,
the landscape, the very world, became a dizzying blur that destroyed
all distinct sense of sight. In the rush of the air, and the
rapid-fire fusillade from the motor, all sense of hearing was benumbed.
A craze for speed took possession of the three--Dorothy, Garrison, the
driver. The power to think on normal lines was being swept away. Such
mania as drives a lawless comet comes inevitably upon all who ride with
such space-defying speed. The one idea is more--more speed--more
freedom--more recklessness of spirit!
A village seven miles from Woodsite, calm in its half-deserted state,
with its men all at business in New York, was cleaved, as it were, by
the racing machines, while women and children ran and screamed to
escape from the path of the monsters.
The fellow behind was once more creeping up. The time consumed in
going seven miles had been barely ten minutes. In fifteen minutes
more, at his present rate of gain, the driver behind would be up
alongside, and then--who knew what would happen?
Dorothy had started as if to speak, at least a dozen times. She was
now holding on with all her strength, aware that conversation was
wholly out of the question.
Garrison was watching constantly through the glass. The race could
hardly last much longer. They were rapidly approaching a larger town,
where such speed would be practically criminal. If only they could
gain a lead and dart into town and around some corner, into traffic of
sufficient density to mask his movements, he and Dorothy might perhaps
alight and escape observation on foot, while the car led pursuit
through the streets.
About to suggest some such plan to his driver, he was suddenly sickened
by a sharp report, like a pistol fired beneath the car. He feared for
a tire, but the noise came again, and then three times, quickly, in
succession. One of the cylinders was missing. Not only was the power
cut down by a fourth, but compression in the engine thus partially
"dead" was a drag on the others of the motor.
The driver leaned forward, one hand on the buzzer of his coil, and gave
a screw a turn. Already the car was losing speed. The fellow behind
was coming on like a red-headed whirlwind. For a moment the missing
seemed to cease, and the speed surged back to the hum of the whirring
gears.
"Bang! Bang!" went the sharp report, as before, and Garrison groaned.
He was looking out, all but hopeless of escape, rapidly reflecting on
the charges that would lie against not only himself, but his chauffeur,
when he saw the red fellow plunge through the dust on a crazy, gyrating
course that made his heart stand still.
They had blown out a tire!
Like a drunken comet, suddenly robbed of all its own crazy laws, the
red demon see-sawed the highway. The man at the wheel, shutting off
his power, crowding on his brakes, and clinging to his wheel with the
skill and coolness of a master, had all he could do to keep the machine
anywhere near the proper highway.
Unaware of what had occurred at the rear the driver in charge of
Garrison's car had once more adjusted the buzzer, and now with such
splendid results that his motor seemed madder than before to run itself
to shreds.
Like a vanishing blot on the landscape, the red car behind, when it
came to a halt, was deserted by its rival in the race. Two minutes
later, with the city ahead fast looming like a barrier before them,
Garrison leaned to the tube.
"Slow down!" he called. "Our friend has quit--a blow-out. Get down to
lawful speed."
Even then they ran fully half a mile before the excited creature of
wheels and fire could be tamed to calmer behavior.