by Jack Steele
CHAPTER XVIII
THE RACE
Some of the roads on Long Island are magnificent. Many of the speedlaws are strict. The thoroughfare stretching ahead of the two cars wasone of the best.
The traffic regulations suffered absolute demolition.
Like a liberated thing of flame and deviltry, happiest when rocketingthrough space, the car beneath the fugitives seemed to bound in the airas it whirred with a higher and higher hum of wheels and gears, and theair drove by in torrential force, leaving a cloud of smoke and dust intheir wake.
Dorothy clung to Jerold, half afraid. He raised himself upon the seatand looked out of the tiny window set in the back. The big car in theroad 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 wasadding to the din on the highway. It was trailing smoke in a dense,bluish cloud that meant they were burning up their lubricant withspendthrift prodigality. But the monster was running superbly.
The houses seemed scooting by in madness. A team that stood beside theroad dwindled swiftly in perspective. The whir of the gears and thefurious discharge of the used-up gas seemed increasing momentarily.The whole machine was rocking as it sped, yet the big red pursuer wasapparently gaining by degrees.
Garrison nodded in acknowledgment of the fact that the car behind, withalmost no tonneau and minus the heavy covered superstructure, offeredless resistance to the wind. With everything else made equal, andaccident barred, the fellow at the wheel behind would overhaul them yet.
He looked out forward. The road was straight for at least a mile. Hebeheld a bicycle policeman, riding ahead, to develop his speed, withthe certain intention of calling to his driver to stop.
Half a minute later the car was abreast the man on the wheel, whoshrieked out his orders on the wind. Garrison leaned to the tube thatended by the chauffeur's ear.
"Go on--give her more if she's got it!" he said. "I'll take care ofthe fines!"
The driver had two notches remaining on his spark advance. He thumbedthe 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 byhis sheer human lack of endurance, drifted to rearward with the dust.
Once more Garrison peered out behind. The big red demon, tearing downthe road, was warming to its work. With cylinders heating, and hermixture therefore going snappily as a natural result, she too had takenon a slight accession of speed. Two meteors, flung from space acrossthe earth's rotundity, could scarcely have been more exciting thanthese 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 destroyedall distinct sense of sight. In the rush of the air, and therapid-fire fusillade from the motor, all sense of hearing was benumbed.
A craze for speed took possession of the three--Dorothy, Garrison, thedriver. The power to think on normal lines was being swept away. Suchmania as drives a lawless comet comes inevitably upon all who ride withsuch space-defying speed. The one idea is more--more speed--morefreedom--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, bythe racing machines, while women and children ran and screamed toescape from the path of the monsters.
The fellow behind was once more creeping up. The time consumed ingoing seven miles had been barely ten minutes. In fifteen minutesmore, at his present rate of gain, the driver behind would be upalongside, and then--who knew what would happen?
Dorothy had started as if to speak, at least a dozen times. She wasnow holding on with all her strength, aware that conversation waswholly out of the question.
Garrison was watching constantly through the glass. The race couldhardly last much longer. They were rapidly approaching a larger town,where such speed would be practically criminal. If only they couldgain a lead and dart into town and around some corner, into traffic ofsufficient density to mask his movements, he and Dorothy might perhapsalight and escape observation on foot, while the car led pursuitthrough the streets.
About to suggest some such plan to his driver, he was suddenly sickenedby a sharp report, like a pistol fired beneath the car. He feared fora tire, but the noise came again, and then three times, quickly, insuccession. One of the cylinders was missing. Not only was the powercut 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 gavea screw a turn. Already the car was losing speed. The fellow behindwas coming on like a red-headed whirlwind. For a moment the missingseemed to cease, and the speed surged back to the hum of the whirringgears.
"Bang! Bang!" went the sharp report, as before, and Garrison groaned.He was looking out, all but hopeless of escape, rapidly reflecting onthe charges that would lie against not only himself, but his chauffeur,when he saw the red fellow plunge through the dust on a crazy, gyratingcourse that made his heart stand still.
They had blown out a tire!
Like a drunken comet, suddenly robbed of all its own crazy laws, thered demon see-sawed the highway. The man at the wheel, shutting offhis power, crowding on his brakes, and clinging to his wheel with theskill and coolness of a master, had all he could do to keep the machineanywhere near the proper highway.
Unaware of what had occurred at the rear the driver in charge ofGarrison's car had once more adjusted the buzzer, and now with suchsplendid results that his motor seemed madder than before to run itselfto shreds.
Like a vanishing blot on the landscape, the red car behind, when itcame to a halt, was deserted by its rival in the race. Two minuteslater, 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 tolawful speed."
Even then they ran fully half a mile before the excited creature ofwheels and fire could be tamed to calmer behavior.