Suppose I keep your name under my hat and you
give me a few little inside tips now and then on polo news, and that sort
of thing?"
"Here's my hand on it. You've no idea what a load you take off my
mind."
"We've circled about and are pretty close to the Garden again. Could
you let me out here?"
The car rolled to an easy stop and the reporter stepped out.
"I'll forget everything you wish, Mr. Woodbury."
"It's an honour to have met you, sir. Use me whenever you can.
Goodnight."
To the chauffeur he said: "Home, and make it fast."
They passed up Lexington with Maclaren "making it fast," so that the
big car was continually nosing its way around the machines in front
with much honking of the horn. At Fifty-Ninth Street they turned
across to the bridge and hummed softly across the black, shimmering
waters of the East River; by the time they reached Brooklyn a fine mist
was beginning to fall, blurring the wind-shield, and Maclaren slowed
up perceptibly, so that before they passed the heart of the city,
Woodbury leaned forward and said: "What's the matter, Maclaren?"
"Wet streets--no chains--this wind-shield is pretty hard to see through."
"Stop her, then. I'll take the wheel the rest of the way. Want to travel a
bit to-night."
The chauffeur, as if this exchange were something he had been
expecting, made no demur, and a moment later, with Woodbury at the
wheel, the motor began to hum again in a gradually increasing
crescendo. Two or three motor-police glanced after the car as it
snapped about corners with an ominous skid and straightened out,
whining, on the new street; but in each case, having made a
comfortable number of arrests that day, they had little heart for the
pursuit of the grey monster through that chill mist.
Past Brooklyn, with a country road before them, Woodbury cut out the
muffler and the car sprang forward with a roar. A gust of increasing
wind whipped back to Maclaren, for the wind-shield had been opened
so that the driver need not look through the dripping glass and mingling
with the wet gale were snatches of singing.
The chauffeur, partly in understanding and partly from anxiety,
apparently, caught the side of the seat in a firm grip and leaned forward
to break the jar when they struck rough places. Around an elbow turn
they went with one warning scream of the Klaxon, skidded horribly at
the sharp angle of the curve, and missed by inches a car from the
opposite direction.
They swept on with the startled yell of the other party ringing after
them, drowned at once by the crackling of the exhaust. Maclaren raised
a furtive hand to wipe from his forehead a moisture which was not
altogether rain, but immediately grasped the side of the seat again.
Straight ahead the road swung up to meet a bridge and dropped sharply
away from it on the further side. Maclaren groaned but the sound was
lost in the increasing roar of the exhaust.
They barely touched that bridge and shot off into space on the other
side like a hurdler clearing an obstacle. With a creak and a thud the big
car landed, reeled drunkenly, and straightened out in earnest, Maclaren
craned his head to see the speedometer, but had not the heart to look; he
began to curse softly, steadily.
When the muffler went on again and the motor was reduced to a loud,
angry humming, Woodbury caught a few phrases of those solemn
imprecations. He grinned into the black heart of the night, streaked
with lines of grey where therein entered the halo of the headlights, and
then swung the car through an open, iron gate. The motor fell to a
drowsily contented murmur that blended with the cool swishing of the
tires on wet gravel.
"Maclaren," said the other, as he stopped in front of the garage, "if
everyone was as good a passenger as you I'd enjoy motoring; but after
all, a car can't act up like a horse." He concluded gloomily: "There's no
fight in it."
And he started toward the house, but Maclaren, staring after the
departing figure, muttered: "There's only one sort that's worse than a
damn fool, and that's a young one."
It was through a door opening off the veranda that Anthony entered the
house, stealthily as a burglar, and with the same nervous apprehension.
Before him stretched a wide hall, dimly illumined by a single light
which splashed on the Italian table and went glimmering across the
floor. Across the hall was his destination--the broad balustraded
staircase, which swept grandly up to the second floor. Toward this he
tiptoed steadying himself with one hand against the wall. Almost to his
goal,

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