“I can’t see nothing to that,” said Kelley. “Looks to me like it’s all bunk. But, say, I want you to tell me one thing.”
“Yes?”
“You called me a fool,” owned Kelley. “And I am. But how did you guess it? And what made you believe I was honest?”
“Experience,” answered Brown Beard drily. “Much experience—in the appraising of curios.”
CHECKERED FLAG, by Cliff Farrell
Doc Elton had never known fear, and he had felt none upon that day when his car left the course and headed for destruction. He had felt only bitter, unreasoning anger at young Stubby Burns.
It had happened during one of the last Vanderbilt Cup races at Santa Monica. It had been Doc’s fault, and normally he would have blamed himself. But a man is not normal after nearly two hundred miles behind the wheel of one of those square-nosed, high-wheeled vehicles that were called racing cars in those days.
Doc had been nearly forty years old then, and forty is long past the deadline in the art of speed. But Doc had been an exception; still a top-notch driver. In second place, only five seconds behind the leader and with two circuits still to go, he had had his white car averaging ninety miles an hour, his heart set on winning.
He had made his mistake in attempting to pass young Stubby Burns on the Soldiers’ Home curve in Sawtelle. Stubby, at that time a wild, reckless novice, was driving his first race against big league competition. Stubby did not dream that even Doc Elton would attempt to take him on that sharp curve. Not a driver in a thousand would have attempted such a thing, and so Stubby held the center of the road. Then he hit a soft spot just as Doc, confident in his ability, perhaps careless after nearly fifteen years of taking such chances, came alongside of him.
Doc’s right wheels were in the loose dirt apron of the track when Stubby’s car slipped into him. The shock was not enough to unbalance Stubby. He strong-armed his black car out of the curve and into the safety of the wide boulevard beyond. But Doc’s white machine skittered off the road and burst through the bales of straw that had been piled there as a cushion for just such mishaps. It remained upright for a hundred feet.
Then it smashed through a picket fence fronting a little cottage. Its wheels caught and it flew up in the air, turning over and over like a toy.
Doc’s mechanician was thrown out and landed on the lawn only slightly injured. But Doc stayed with the car until it crashed into the porch of the cottage. Tough and wiry, he was still alive, but he would never drive again. In addition to other injuries, an arm was done for. A surgeon at the hospital dubiously attempted to save the arm—and he did—but never again would it be flexible enough to nurse a speeding car around a fast curve.
Doc had raved considerably during the first two days in the hospital; and Stubby Burns’ name had figured largely in his ravings. He never again mentioned Stubby after his head had cleared, but he was no longer the good-humored, smiling eyed Doc Elton that the speedways had always known. And it was not solely the fact that he was through as a driver that had changed Doc.
Perhaps it was a type of shock—crash-shock, something akin to shell-shock. But whatever the psychology of it, Doc Elton bore a grudge against Stubby Burns, unreasonable and far-fetched as that may seem.
Doc recovered, and in time was forgotten in the racing pits. It was generally understood by a few veterans who knew him that Doc was operating an automobile agency in Glendale, and that he was prospering. It was known that Doc was married and had a son about eleven years of age at the time of his Santa Monica crackup, But the name of Elton was no longer lettered on pit walls.
Motor racing evolved. Road racing was a thing of the past. The era of saucer tracks came and the pace grew faster. In Doc’s day one hundred miles an hour was about the limit. But smaller and more efficient motors, slimmer bodies and better surfaces on which to ride, gradually pushed the average up. Cars were reduced to one-man capacity for the sake of speed. On the boards, men began to turn laps at upwards of one hundred and fifty miles an hour.
About ten years later, the name of Elton reappeared on a speedway entry list. It was at the Brookside dirt track in Los Angeles that Pinkie Elton, Doc’s son, now grown to manhood, was introduced to the sport where men dared and too often died.
Pinkie bore little resemblance to his father. His mother, now dead, had given him dreamy gray eyes, a high forehead and thin, sensitive features. He had a trace of his father’s bulldog chin; but all in all, he only faintly suggested the daredevil Doc Elton of the road racing days. He was more of the studious type, though his shoulders were square and his muscles sinewy, for he had been a track star in high school and college.
Pinkie appeared lost on that first day at the track with his father. Doc, however, was in a rhapsody of excitement. He had waited weary years for Pinkie to reach maturity, years during which he had bitterly watched, through the medium of the newspapers, the rise of Stubby Burns to international fame as a speedway star.
Stubby was a veteran now. He had been at the dangerous sport for so long that he was called the old master. At the peak of his career, twice national champion, winner of the recent Indianapolis five hundred mile race, Stubby’s exploits behind the wheel were earning him a place along with Oldfield, DePalma, Milton, DePaolo and the other past and present greats of the motor world.
Once Doc had pointed to a newspaper picture of Stubby and had said to Pinkie, “There’s the fellow who’s going to eat the dust of an Elton again some day.”
Doc was a hero to his son, and Pinkie had thrilled to the lore of the speedways. But he had always listened in an impersonal way. Not until that day at Brookside did he realize the full sacrifice that Doc was demanding of him. Pinkie preferred the law as a profession, but he could not brook his father’s eager plans. And so, with a cheerful face and a leaden heart, he stood in the pits beside a new, tiny, four-cylinder racing car and listened.
“Take it easy today,” Doc cautioned. “Don’t try for speed. You know, this isn’t like driving a boulevard. This is a slow track but a dangerous one. The curves are sharp, and you can hit a fence hard enough at sixty to muss things up. Get the feel of the car and the track. Take it easy.”
“Right, dad,” said Pinkie obediently. Only the vacant grandstands stared solemnly down at Pinkie as he drove out on the track, for this was early morning and the next event at Brookside was still two weeks away.
* * * *
Pinkie followed instructions. He learned how to handle the car. Each day he and Doc were at the track, and finally Pinkie was turning the circuit at respectable speed. But Doc felt that there was something missing. Perhaps he expected too much, but Pinkie’s driving was listless, dead, mechanical. He did what he was told, and that was all. There was no fire, no spirit, in his work. Other drivers sometimes appeared for practice, and Doc noted that Pinkie avoided them when they were on the track with him. He never engaged in a friendly brush.
“How does it go, son?” Doc asked carelessly, ten days later. “Think you’d care to take a crack at real competition this week? We must sign an entry today if we’re going to drive.”
“Might as well start right away,” Pinkie said indifferently.
“That’s the spirit,” said Doc heartily. “A year here at Brookside, and you’ll be ripe for the high speed racket. Then you can take a fall out of this fellow Burns.”
“Now listen dad,” protested Pinkie. “I’m willing to drive my best in any race you want me to enter, but I’m not going to start a feud with Stubby Burns. It would be ridiculous. Burns is a great driver. He has nearly ten years’ experience on me. Besides, Burns probably didn’t intend to crack you up at Santa Monica. It was an accident.”
“Accident!” shouted Doc. “Maybe he didn’t intend to wreck me, but he crowded me! What right did a kid have crowding Doc Elton in a big race? I’ll show him that an Elton can drive his wheels off.”
That was it. Shell-shock or crash-shock or whatever one wanted to call it. On all other subjects Doc, now
nearly fifty, was a normal, hard-headed business man. But he still saw red whenever the name of Stubby Burns came up.
Pinkie was a starter at Brookside the following Sunday afternoon. Now the Brookside track, while small, was not easy. It was a Class B circuit where the qualification rules and the car specifications were not as rigid as on the big time ovals. Youngsters who were anxious to graduate to the championship events were there at Brookside to prove their nerve and ability, and they always drove at peak speed. It was a testing ground for human endurance, and its examinations were too often written in blood.
“Don’t try to win,” Doc told his son as the field began to smoke up. “Just drive for experience.”
Pinkie obeyed literally—too literally. There were fourteen entries in the fifty, mile event, and Pinkie finished tenth. Four of the original starters had dropped out during the course of the race because of motor trouble and a smashup or two, and so it took no figuring to discover that when it was all over Pinkie was last.
Pinkie’s driving had been mechanically perfect. He sat the car easily and swept it around the curves calmly, his four wheels always smoothly in line. But Doc was disappointed. He had hoped that his son, in the stress of competition, would show some of the fighting spirit without which no man can become a champion in any line of endeavor.
Doc was persistent, however. For a year Pinkie drove at Brookside and other small dirt tracks in the southwest; a nerve-racking year which Pinkie endured stoically. He even began taking risks because he knew his father expected it. Finally, he began to win occasional small races, and the name of Elton seemed on its way again to ascendancy in the speed world.
Then, on Pinkie’s birthday, Doc led him into a private workshop in the Elton motor establishment in Glendale. A new racing car sat resplendently on the floor, and even Pinkie was enthused by the sight of it. The machine was one of the latest products from the shop of Miller, in Los Angeles. Powered with a ninety-one inch motor, it was as compact as a bullet and as graceful as an arrow. Squatting close to the ground, its lines concealed its true bulk and sturdiness. That car had cost Doc nearly twenty thousand dollars.
“There she is, son,” said Doc proudly. “A front drive straight eight. You can toss that four cylinder job on the scrap heap now. You’re ready for a crack at real racing. I’m going to enter you at Ocean City in the three hundred mile roll next month.”
“Whew,” gasped Pinkie inwardly quailing at the thought, well knowing what speed they were making on the big mile and a half saucer track at Ocean City. “Do you think I can do it?”
“Think you can do it!” echoed Doc scornfully. “An Elton can drive on any track with the best of them. Stubby Burns will be riding against you.——Beat him, son! Beat him and show him what an Elton can do. You’re ready. This car should be as fast as any in the world. It’s equipped with everything to make it so. It’s up to you.”
* * * *
Stubby Burns was at Ocean City on the first afternoon that Doc and Pinkie appeared there for practice. The race was two weeks away; but the score of drivers entered were wasting no time tuning for the event, for it was a championship race and it carried one of the biggest purses of the year. In addition, every man knew that it was to be a blistering speed test, for this bowl was so scientifically built with sweeping, steeply banked curves and sloping stretches that it was in reality a straightaway. The only limit to velocity was the ability of the motor and the nerve of the pilot.
Stubby did not recognize Doc at first, but he soon learned that the car was entered under the name of Elton and he realized then that Doc, in the person of his son, was back on the track. And so Stubby walked casually down to the pit that had been assigned the Elton car. Doc saw him coming and began glowering.
“Hello, Doc,” said Stubby evenly, extending his hand. Both were thinking of that terrific moment at Santa Monica ten years before.
“You crowded me off the road and into a hospital once, Burns,” Doc snapped, ignoring the hand. “You put me off the track for keeps. But another Elton is here to start in where I left off. You’re going to eat splinters from now on.”
“I wish you luck, kid,” said Stubby, flushing and turning to Pinkie. And he said it sincerely. “If there’s anything I can do to help you, let me know.”
“The only thing we want you to do is to get out of this pit,” yelled Doc, blind with years of pent up fury. “We’ll do our talking on the track. And don’t try to crowd us either.”
Stubby retreated to his own pit. He waited until Pinkie was ready to drive out on the track, then squeezed into his own car, a marvelous red machine that had carried him to victory in half a dozen fiercely fought races. He drove to the backstretch and stopped on the apron. Pinkie appeared a moment later, driving slowly in low gear to warm the motor. Stubby waved an arm and Pinkie stopped alongside.
“What’s it to be, kid,” the veteran asked. “Peace or war?”
“I’d be a fool to declare war on you,” Pinkie said honestly. “Don’t take to heart what the Old Man says. He doesn’t really mean it.”
“I’m not afraid of anybody on the sidelines,” Stubby smiled. “My worries are on the track.”
“I’m only a greenhorn,” said Pinkie. “The Old Man knows nothing about saucer track driving. If you can give me a few hints, I’ll be grateful.”
“Follow me,” Stubby invited. “We’ll turn about a dozen laps at slow speed. Then when I wave my elbows, be ready to give it the gun. Keep your arms in. Remember that the banked curves will help you negotiate them, so be careful and don’t oversteer or you’ll go into a spin.”
Pinkie fell in behind the red car. Stubby drove at about ninety miles an hour, a snail-like pace for this track, until he felt sure that the novice had got the feel of his car. Then he gave the signal and gradually began to open up.
Pinkie was an expert at following instructions. He hung a dozen feet behind the pointed tail of Stubby’s car, matching notch for notch the throttle increase. The speed reached two miles a minute, and Stubby looked back to study his pupil’s work. Pinkie grinned, and Stubby turned back to his task. They turned the final lap at better than one hundred and thirty, and Pinkie handled his machine capably. It was a valuable session, for Stubby had taught the youngster the proper way to ride these sloping curves”
“You’ll do,” Stubby said as they drifted to the pits.
But Doc Elton was far from pleased, and Pinkie recognized the storm signals as he came to a stop.
“Why didn’t you pass that skunk?” Doc growled.
“I didn’t have the ability,” Pinkie said truthfully.
“He hasn’t the guts,” Doc told himself later, voicing for the first time the fear that had been growing within him ever since that first day at Brookside when Pinkie had finished last. Doc was beginning to feel the fierce pangs of failure. He had produced a mechanically perfect racing driver, but one who was only a robot. Pinkie had no spirit, no will to win, and worse than that, he had accepted help from the very man upon whom Doc had sworn vengeance.
Pinkie practiced doggedly and faithfully, finally qualifying for the race by turning a lap at one hundred and thirty-six miles an hour. That placed him fifteenth in the list of twenty starters.
Stubby Burns had qualified at one hundred and forty-six miles and hour, but that was only good enough to give him the pole in the second row, as the cars lined up two by two. Pinkie, nervous and moody, and at the same time depressed and unmoved by the pre-race ceremonies and unresponsive to the crowd that packed the grandstands, sat pallid in his car, awaiting the final bomb.
Stubby grinned encouragingly back at him as the field smoked up and the pole car led the way slowly along the apron. It was to be a massed flying start, with three laps to get the race started.
Pinkie was dazed by the magnitude of the task. He flinched at the thought of what was to come, for he rode in the middle of a stream of thunderbolts that were picking up speed gradually in preparation for launching themselves into fierce c
ompetition.
On the second preliminary swing around the bowl, the pace reached one hundred miles an hour; and the cars, riding in pairs, were swinging higher up on the saucer. As they entered the third and final lap, the speed topped two miles a minute, and was still climbing steadily.
Pinkie faltered in the backstretch. Every other driver was tensed for the jump-off, but Pinkie lifted his foot. His white car lost momentum and fell back among the two pairs of machines following him. Those four pilots were forced to reach for brakes to avoid a general crackup, and the result was that the field was thrown into such confusion that the green starting flag did not fall.
It required two laps for the cars to realign themselves, and the drivers’ taut nerves were twitching as a result of the false start. They thundered down on the green flag again. This time Pinkie did not falter. He had steeled himself. But Stubby Burns had fouled a spark plug during all the jockeying; and now he fell back, with one barrel missing, as the stream of cars poured across the starting line.
Pinkie swerved past Stubby, only vaguely realizing it; and before they had reached the backstretch, Stubby had fallen to the tail of the squirming mass of machines. But the plug was clearing now, and as the leaders completed the first lap, clipping along at one hundred and forty miles an hour, Stubby began to pick up his lost ground.
Pinkie was in fourteenth position, and content to remain there. But two laps later Stubby bore down on him, determined to work his way back to the head of the procession. Stubby rushed alongside Pinkie on the north turn, though Pinkie did not know that it was Stubby. He was too busy holding his humming bit of machinery between those two white fences that spun dizzily past. He merely sensed the shadow at his side.
Pinkie had been told by Doc to hold his position for the first hundred miles and then to begin to drive. He now attempted to follow instructions and he opened the throttle a fraction. His white car picked up more momentum. But Stubby was also moving faster with every turn of his wheels, and the red car and the white car sailed around the curve side by side.
The Adventure Megapack Page 42