Part 6 (1/2)
”Likes him! He loves him. You know Lestrange lives with him; a bachelor household, cozy as grigs.”
Just past here ran the road, beyond a high cedar hedge. While he was speaking, the irregular explosive reports of a motor had sounded down the valley, unmistakable to those familiar with the testing of the stripped cars, and rapidly approaching. Now, as Emily would have answered, the roar suddenly changed in character, an appalling series of explosions mingled with the grind of outraged machinery suddenly braked, and some one shouted above the din. The next instant a huge ma.s.s shot past the other side of the hedge and there followed a dull crash.
”That's one of our men!” gasped d.i.c.k, and plunged headlong through the shrubbery.
Dazed momentarily, Emily stood, then caught up her skirts and ran after him. She knew well enough what the testers of the cars risked.
”d.i.c.k!” she appealed. ”d.i.c.k!”
But it was not the wreck she antic.i.p.ated that met her eyes as she came through the hedge. On the opposite side of the road a long low skeleton car was standing, one side lurched drunkenly down with two wheels in the gutter. Still in his seat, the driver was leaning over the steering-wheel, out of breath, but laughing a greeting to the astonished d.i.c.k.
”A break in the steering-gear,” he declared, by way of explanation. ”I told Bailey it was a weak point; now perhaps he'll believe me and strengthen it.”
”You're not hurt,” d.i.c.k inferred.
”I think she's not--a tire gone. Find anything wrong, Rupert?”
”Two tires off,” said the laconic mechanician. ”Two funerals postponed. That was a pretty stop, Darling.”
”Very,” coolly agreed Lestrange, rising and removing his goggles.
”What's the matter, Ffrench?”
”You frightened us out of our five senses, that's all. Do you usually practise for races out here?”
”_Us?_” repeated Lestrange, and turning, saw the girl at the edge of the park. ”Miss Ffrench, I beg your pardon!”
The swift change in his tone, the ease of deference with which he bared his head and, motor caps not being readily donned or doffed, so remained bareheaded in the bright sunlight, savored of the Continent.
”It is too commonplace to say good morning,” Emily replied, her color rising with her smile. ”I am very glad you escaped. But that is commonplace, too, I'm afraid.”
”Every one is commonplace before breakfast,” rea.s.sured her cousin.
”Honestly, Lestrange, do you practise racing here?”
”Hardly. I'm trying out the car; every car has to go through that before it is used. Don't you know that we've recently secured from the local authorities a permit to run at any speed over this road between four o'clock and eight in the morning? I thought all the country-side knew that.”
”But we have a regiment of men to test cars.”
Lestrange pa.s.sed a caressing glance over the dingy-gray machine in its state of bareness that suggested indecorum.
”This is my car, the one I'll race this spring and summer. No one drives it but me. Besides, I have to have some diversion.”
He stepped to the ground with the last word, and went around to where Rupert was on his knees beside the machine.
”Can you fix it here?” he demanded.
”Not precisely,” was the drawled reply. ”Back to camp for it with a horse in front.”
”All right. You'll have to walk down and get a car from Mr. Bailey to tow it home.”
Rupert got up, his dark, malign little face twisted.