Green Fancy | Page 4

to him, but there wasn't much doubt as to the nature of her remarks. She was roundly upbraiding him.
Urged to action by thoughts of his own plight, he hurried to her side and said:
"Excuse me, please. You dropped something. Shall I put it up in front or in the tonneau?"
The whimsical note in his voice brought a quick, responsive laugh from her lips.
"Thank you so much. I am frightfully careless with my valuables. Would you mind putting it in behind? Thanks!" Her tone altered completely as she ordered the man to turn the car around--"And be quick about it," she added.
The first drops of rain pelted down from the now thoroughly black dome above them, striking in the road with the sharpness of pebbles.
"Lucky it's a limousine," said the tall traveller. "Better hop in. We'll be getting it hard in a second or two."
"I can't very well hop in while he's backing and twisting like that, can I?" she laughed. He was acutely aware of a strained, nervous note in her voice, as of one who is confronted by an undertaking calling for considerable fortitude.
"Are you quite sure of this man?" he asked.
"Absolutely," she replied, after a pause.
"You know him, eh?"
"By reputation," she said briefly, and without a trace of laughter.
"Well, that comforts me to some extent," he said, but dubiously.
She was silent for a moment and then turned to him impulsively.
"You must let me take you on to the Tavern in the car," she said. "Turn about is fair play. I cannot allow you to--"
"Never mind about me," he broke in cheerily. He had been wondering if she would make the offer, and he felt better now that she had done so. "I'm accustomed to roughing it. I don't mind a soaking. I've had hundreds of 'em."
"Just the same, you shall not have one to-night," she announced firmly. The car stopped beside them. "Get in behind. I shall sit with the driver."
If any one had told him that this rattling, dilapidated automobile,-- ten years old, at the very least, he would have sworn,--was capable of covering the mile in less than two minutes, he would have laughed in his face. Almost before he realised that they were on the way up the straight, dark road, the lights in the windows of Hart's Tavern came into view. Once more the bounding, swaying car came to a stop under brakes, and he was relaxing after the strain of the most hair-raising ride he had ever experienced.
Not a word had been spoken during the trip. The front windows were lowered. The driver,--an old, hatchet-faced man,--had uttered a single word just before throwing in the clutch at the cross-roads in response to the young woman's crisp command to drive to Hart's Tavern. That word was uttered under his breath and it is not necessary to repeat it here.
He lost no time in climbing out of the car. As he leaped to the ground and raised his green hat, he took a second look at the automobile,--a look of mingled wonder and respect. It was an old-fashioned, high- powered Panhard, capable, despite its antiquity, of astonishing speed in any sort of going.
"For heaven's sake," he began, shouting to her above the roar of the wind and rain, "don't let him drive like that over those--"
"You're getting wet," she cried out, a thrill in her voice. "Good night,--and thank you!"
"Look out!" rasped the unpleasant driver, and in went the clutch. The man in the road jumped hastily to one side as the car shot backward with a jerk, curved sharply, stopped for the fraction of a second, and then bounded forward again, headed for the cross-roads.
"Thanks!" shouted the late passenger after the receding tail light, and dashed up the steps to the porch that ran the full length of Hart's Tavern. In the shelter of its low-lying roof, he stopped short and once more peered down the dark, rain-swept road. A flash of lightning revealed the flying automobile. He waited for a second flash. It came an instant later, but the car was no longer visible. He shook his head. "I hope the blamed old fool knows what he's doing, hitting it up like that over a wet road. There'll be a double funeral in this neck of the woods if anything goes wrong," he reflected. Still shaking his head, he faced the closed door of the Tavern.
A huge, old-fashioned lantern hung above the portal, creaking and straining in the wind, dragging at its stout supports and threatening every instant to break loose and go frolicking away with the storm.
The sound of the rain on the clap-board roof was deafening. At the lower end of the porch the water swished in with all the velocity of a gigantic wave breaking over a ship at sea.