“BLACK BLOOD”

BY EDWARD LYELL FOX

WITH PICTURES BY WILLIAM H. FOSTER

DRIFTING mists enveloped the landscape, a thousand gray wraiths crawling through the air, their thin bodies changing, contracting, vanishing. Over toward Massapequa the sky was brightening, distant lights of purple and pink fighting their way through the mists, a dim burning of color like that of fire through smoke. Somewhere a rooster crowed; a dog barked drowsily. Already the vague shadows of the night were congealing into trees, a rail fence, farm buildings. Beyond them more trees, a stone wall, a red barn appeared. From the earth rose the fresh odors of a new day.

In the windows of the house on the opposite side of the road lights appeared. The figure of a man moved into shadow on a curtain and was gone. No sound came from within. Then a door creaked open, feet shuffled. Four men, carrying lanterns, issued forth and waited on the porch. They began to talk in hoarse, early morning voices. The door opened again; a powerful, soldierly looking man appeared. He said something in a foreign tongue, and the others, lighting their lanterns, hurried toward the barn.

When they were gone, Léon Giron, whom the newspapers called “the greatest automobile race-driver in the world,” lighted a cigarette and scowled. Indeed, he had begun the last ten days in the same way—the cigarette, the scowl. This daybreak practice on the Vanderbilt Cup Course had become distasteful. It was unnecessary, with the race as good as won. Still, his employees had insisted. Scowling again, Giron waited for his mechanicians to roll out the big Saturn.

He had thought of trying the twenty-mile cup course for speed or of studying the turns, most particularly the one just opposite, where the Jericho Turnpike bent into a right angle and continued as a narrow road. He was still undecided when from down the pike came the low rumbling of a motor. Louder and louder it grew, a growing succession of reports that split the quiet air like volleys of musketry. Now Giron could see the flames of its exhausts, the yellow and red flashes, wild fire shining through the mists. Now he saw the white bulk of the machine, the long, lean hood, the tilted steering-post, the two black forms crouched behind.

On it came, faster than the wind, a spew of flame and smoke, a voice-breathing thunder, a monstrous white dragon bursting the dawn. As Giron watched, as his trained eye timed instantly the frightful speed, as his experience whispered that for a car to rush the Jericho turn meant disaster, possible death, the man’s face showed only cold interest. Years before men had called him steel-nerved, ruthless, abnormally cruel.

But now the white car crashed past. Swerving, it threw up a wall of flying dirt, skidded terribly, shot across the road, seemed about to go off, but, righting, bellowed round “the Jericho,” and rushed toward Westbury. And as it went, as its dust-cloud trembled and fell, as its explosions grew fainter and fainter, Giron stood watching, a startled figure leaning far over the porch-rail, unbelief and venom in his face. And as he watched, waiting until the white car was only a speck dissolving toward Westbury, his lips began to move. To the air he talked doubtfully, musingly, saying aloud:

“I thought there was only one man who could take a turn like that. One man,”—his eyes glittered,—“Jean Lescault was his name, and I fixed him seven years ago.”

Turning abruptly, he walked toward the garage.

Meanwhile the white car, passing Westbury, had turned off the course and, rumbling contentedly, had come to a stop before Krugs. As you may know, Krugs, an old-fashioned Long Island road-house kept by a tidy German woman, has for years been the quarters of the cup-racers. Here in spacious stables are kept the machines of two companies, sometimes of three. Here in the uncomfortable rooms of the inn sleep their crews, drivers, mechanics, team-managers. In its low-ceilinged dining-room they sit, a score of them, smudgy-faced and in overalls, a careless, boyish company whose faces, were they not so lined, you would call young.

Nobody paid much attention to the white car as its heavy panting became quieter and then died away, nor did they notice the tall, strapping man with the boyish face who climbed out from the driver’s seat, nor the broken little figure who climbed with him. As one of the reporters had said, “Sammy Stevenson always looks as if he had just jumped out of a cold plunge.” The expression was very pat. The boyish Stevenson’s skin always seemed tingling, coloring; his eyes clear and wide-open; his body tense, full-blown, strong. And as he kept step with his companion in their walk toward the house, one would have said that the contrast was pitiless; for the other man was a cripple. One of his legs was shorter than the other; as he walked, his body swayed from side to side; his left sleeve was empty. His whole frame looked gaunt, emaciated, racked—racked, one thought immediately, by some terrible accident that had disfigured his face, lining it with a long, white scar. Though hideously ugly, broken in body, the little man walked with his head well up, his chin high. And Stevenson regarded him as he might have regarded a deity.

Out in Detroit, at the Mercury Motor-Car Company factory, everybody knew the little man as “Old Lescault.” Five years before this time he had appeared mysteriously, and in a few hours the factory had hired him as a “racing expert.” He had taken Sammy Stevenson from the testing service, put him on one of the racing-cars, and taught him “the game.” In his department his word was law. Even John Willard, the company’s gruff and positive president, who never had been known to take advice, obeyed this hideous little Frenchman, who ruled all with a word, a grimace, and made the sturdy, self-reliant Stevenson his personal worshiper and the hostile factory hands his sympathetic friends.

Just now Jean Lescault was busy explaining something to Stevenson. The young man listened intently.

“You’ll lose time on those turns,” Lescault was saying, “unless you take them the way I tell you. Instead of swinging wide and describing a curve, I want you to do this: rush the car right into the turn, jam on the brakes, skid around on your front wheels, and then shoot ahead. Look!” He quickly sketched a diagram on the breakfast-cloth. “There,” he exclaimed, looking up, “that shows how you’ll cut time on the fellow who curves around. It’s dangerous, but not if you keep your head. You tried it at Jericho this morning and made it. Do it at every turn hereafter.”

Stevenson nodded. Jean Lescault would be obeyed.

But Lescault wanted to tell him other things. It was his first morning on the course. For some reason he had seen fit to remain in New York despite Stevenson’s urging him to come down. Now, as they finished breakfast, and Stevenson, pushing back his chair, remarked that he was going out to see that the mechanics put away the car properly, a last question came to Lescault’s lips:

“How”—he paused—“how is Giron getting along?”

Stevenson hesitated before answering.

“Do you know him?” he asked.

“No,” said Lescault.

“I asked,” said Stevenson, “because if, being a countryman, he happened also to be a friend of yours, I shouldn’t want to repeat certain things. Most of the American drivers dislike him. They criticize him for not stopping when he knocked down that boy and broke his leg during practice the other morning. They say Giron couldn’t have known whether he killed him or not, and cared less. They say, too, that his manner is unbearable, conceited, and sneering.”

“But his work,” interrupted Lescault, impatiently,—“his driving, his skill, his nerve,—what of these things? Of the others I have heard.”

“His driving,” replied Stevenson, “is really wonderful. He’s a daredevil, cool, thorough, and skilled. The newspapers say nothing like his ability has ever been seen on the Vanderbilt Cup Course.”

“Damn the newspapers!” cried Lescault in a rage. “We’ll beat him. I tell you, we’ll beat him.”

As he slid up abruptly from the table and limped away, Stevenson noticed his eyes. In them was an expression that was not good to see.

Going to his room, Lescault locked the door behind him. He listened for a moment at the keyhole, and then; seizing his traveling-bag, emptied it on the bed. From a confusion of socks and shirts he rooted out a small tin box, set it aside, put back the bag, and composed himself on the edge of the bed. His slightest movement had become eager, stealthy. Holding the tin box on his knee, he patted it fondly. He produced a key, and chuckled as it grated in the lock. His hands were shaking as he threw back the cover and carefully took out the contents. Not gold or precious stones rolled out before him, not the hoard of a miser, the collection of a seeker of rare things, or the sacred relics of a family trust, but a heap of photographs! On the bed he spread them, arranged in some accustomed order, and as he bent over each his breath came with a low, hissing sound. His eyes, half shut, blazed queerly—eyes that looked not upon memoirs of love, but of hate.

It was a full minute before he moved. Then he snatched one of the photographs and held it from him, tearing the edges with his clenched hands. It was a full-length picture of a straight, soldierly looking man who might be called good looking were it not for the curl of his mouth. Below it was written:

“Léon Giron, taken upon his arrival in New York.”

As he gazed at the man’s straight and powerful figure, Lescault’s mutilated face became savage in its hate.

“And I’d have been like you, Léon Giron, if you’d played square,” he accused the picture. “I’d have been like you, with my body whole and young and vigorous. Bah!” He threw it from him and picked up another.

“Ho!” he cried, “this is how you looked when you won the Grand Prix, when they pelted you with flowers after you had crossed the line, when with your dirty driving you sent me into a ditch and left me out on that road, dying, as you thought. But I didn’t die, Léon Giron.”

His voice had fallen to a whisper, strained, harsh, the way a man talks when some overpowering emotion takes him. He snatched up picture after picture,—racing scenes all of them,—only to examine each feverishly and fling it away.

“Here you are when you won the Targa Floria,—” he was talking rapidly, addressing one picture after another,—“when you won the Berlin cup, the Czar’s trophy, all my races, all of them—mine, if you’d played square. And this is after you won at Brooklands. That was a year ago. I could have beaten you then, Giron. For three years I’ve been training a boy for you, teaching him all I know, more than you’ll ever know, about racing. I’ve given him every trick that used to beat you, confound you! that maddened on into throwing me into the ditch.

“And I’ve given that boy more. I’ve devised new tricks, new strategies, skill you’ve never dreamed of; and he’ll beat you, Léon Giron. He’ll beat you in the Vanderbilt. He’ll break you on the greatest day of your career. He, a boy, will make you a laughing-stock—you, the favorite. You’ve come from Europe, your great reputation preceding you but you’ll fail. And it’ll be the clean, strong body of young Stevenson, like mine was. But more than that, the brain of Jean Lescault will break you, Giron—the brain of poor old Lescault, working down in the pits.”

As he dropped the pictures one by one back into the box, as, trembling and leering, he gazed and spat upon the image of Giron, it seemed as though the beast in him might be trying to overpower the God. Thus it was Lescault’s custom to drink deeply of the vials of hate, to nurse his spleen, to envenom his whole being against this one man.

The idea had come to him one winter morning seven years before, when he had just left the hospital at Lariboisière. In a shop-window he had seen the photograph of Giron, flower-showered, coolly triumphant in his Grand Prix car. With rancor slowly filling his soul, Lescault had bought the picture, carried it to his room, brooded over it, conceived his awful hate, planned the reckoning that alone could satisfy it. Then he happened upon another picture in which Giron was again the central figure, and bought that, too, placed it alongside the other, and brooded. The overthrow of Giron became an obsession, in time a paranœa. Indeed, during the days immediately preceding the Vanderbilt race, Lescault, when not busy with Stevenson, spent most of his time in his room; and the pictures, shrine of his hatred, were always before him.

Meanwhile Giron had become a byword with those thousands and thousands who a day hence would swarm Hempstead plains and watch him guide the big Saturn on its quest for the cup. The newspapers were full of him. They told of his rise, of his quarters at Jericho, of his mannerisms, of the almost slavish obedience that he exacted of his helpers; but they always spoke, too, of his nerve, his utter fearlessness, his immobile face, his calmness when the wind was singing in his ears and the wheels were sweeping the ground beneath him, as the whirlwind sweeps chaff. Yet of all the “stories” there was only one that presented Giron as he actually was. And that was done by a noted writer who had visited the course for “color.” This man saw beyond Giron’s indifference and coldness, and guessed ruthlessness and cruelty to be a strong part of him. Telltale lines had long ago written their revelations on Giron’s mouth, so that all might read who could.

And so came the eve of the race, with Giron the word on the public’s lips. The favorite, conceded beyond all doubt as the winner, he sat alone in his quarters at Jericho, scorning the gossip of the camps, hearing no word of the cripple who had been seen on the course with Stevenson, coolly confident, an eternal sneer on his lips, the ruthless fires of a Messala in his eyes. No man could come between him and this greatest triumph of his career; no man could do it and live. He unconsciously felt it.

All that night the spectators descended upon the course, coming by train and trolley, luncheon-boxes and blankets in hand. Numberless droves of them came by motor, an endless, fiery-scaled snake that writhed slowly down the roads from New York, coiled round the course, moaned constantly, and waited. At dawn the race was to start; thirty of the most powerful automobiles ever made would pit their speed for three hundred miles, a harsh test, over an oblong of country road, with half a million people looking on.

Lescault, shivering despite his warm wraps, was in the repair pits as the cars began to come to the line. Tints of violet and pink were creeping over the fields, and in the growing light of morning the headlights of a row of automobiles drawn up behind the grand-stand fence began to look self-conscious and absurd. Behind him, in a box, he saw a party of men, their eyes heavy-lidded for want of sleep. They were drinking something from a metal bottle. Lescault decided it was coffee, and wished he had some. Then he forgot about the coffee, for far in the distance a sound, deep and droning, caught his ear. It was the voice of the Saturn. Lescault recognized it instantly.

In perfect control of himself he waited. He had left hysteria behind at Krugs, locked it in the same drawer with the pictures. Now, if never before, he must restrain himself. This day he must become again the old Lescault of the race-course, calm, emotionless. It would be hard at the sight of Giron, but he must be cool. And now he heard the booming of an engine; saw the fires of the Saturn’s exhausts burning the morning; saw the big red car come nearer and nearer, its engine, shutting off, thundering intermittently; saw it advance with its speed throttled, calmly, majestically, as a car of triumph should come; and on the conqueror’s seat sat Giron. Slowly it rolled past the repair trenches, past the Jupiter, the Green Dragon; now it was almost abreast the Mercury, and Lescault, timing his move, scrambled suddenly from the pit, and stood waiting on the road.

That Giron had seen him he knew. Lescault had caught the momentary surprise on his face, the exclamation on his lips. But Giron had swiftly regained his habitual sneer—a sneer that curled his lips as he passed the pit and spit deliberately at the feet of the man below him.

But Lescault’s self-control was superb, and as the Saturn rolled past, he looked after it, smiled, and spoke as he had spoken to the pictures, saying sweetly under his breath:

“Léon Giron, I’ve got you.”

The road was now jammed with masses of shaking, smoking steel. One car followed another, manœuvered for position, choked the course, thickened the bluish haze that, rising from the exhausts, hung almost as motionless as a canopy. Here were the trim-looking Vegas and their French drivers; the Green Dragons, with fierce-looking Italians behind the wheels; a curious cartridge-shaped car entered by an American concern; and the Mercury, called the “Ninety,” because of its tremendous horse-power. Stevenson was at the wheel, and as the grand stand saw his boyish, good-looking face, there were exclamations, then a rattle of applause, growing into steady cheering. Waving his hand and grinning, Stevenson stopped before the pit and, swinging himself over the rail, joined Lescault. He was dressed in white,—suit and skull-piece,—with black gloves, black streamers trailing from his hat, black puttees to his knees, a picturesque figure with his broad chest and shoulders. It had been Lescault’s wish that Stevenson, like the car, be in white and black. He remembered that some of the crusaders of old used to dress that way.

During those last minutes Lescault’s words to Stevenson were as an exhortation. Of technic he could give the boy no more, for his skill had been transmitted completely, astoundingly to him. So now, with his voice lowered, Lescault spoke with all his long-growing, loosened emotions; he impressed upon him that Giron was the one to beat, the only rival he need fear, and commanded him particularly to obey orders, do all that he said, nothing more. And Stevenson, who long ago had caught the fervor of this broken-bodied little Frenchman, felt a fierce yearning to be at the wheel, to be riding the wind, with all others falling as he rode. With an exclamation he sprang from the pit and scrambled into the car. The soul of jean Lescault would be driving the “Ninety” that day.

By this time chaos had opened its gates. Thirty engines were roaring, their steel throats belching. Flame and smoke burst from them. A clamor of machinery smote the ear. Gears rattled shrilly, levers ground and rasped. A stench of oil assailed the nostrils. Now the bluish canopy, thickening, descended as a curtain. Through it Lescault saw the “Ninety” sliding like a great specter, creeping along until its front wheels almost touched the red tanks of the Saturn.

Above the crash of machinery he heard a man’s voice intoning the seconds from one to ten backward. He could not see the man, for the drifting smoke shrouded all; but he listened, and suddenly a voice shouted “Go!” Then came a rattling from the Saturn, a succession of sharp reports, a deep boom, a savage cry from Giron: the Vanderbilt was on.

Three minutes later the white “Ninety” loomed through the smoke, paused on the line, licked at the starter with thin tongues of yellow flame, and, snorting eagerly, crashed away.

Twenty-seven other cars followed, but upon none of them would Lescault deign to glance. With pad and pencil in hand he was busy figuring how fast Stevenson would have to go to lead Giron at the end of the first lap. He knew that the best Giron had done in practice was a circuit of the twenty-mile course in eighteen minutes. This was at the rate of sixty-seven miles an hour. And Lescault grinned, for he had told Stevenson to keep his speedometer at seventy-five miles an hour, gain a two-minute lead at the outset, and confound Giron when the race was only a lap old.

His figures verified, Lescault waited impatiently for the Saturn to appear. If it came just one minute ahead of the “Ninety,” his schedule was true. Time dragged; the crowd settled back; the tense vigil disintegrated into stretchings and yawnings. The stage of a Vanderbilt is not reset quickly, but long before the signal “Car coming!” passed for miles from mouth to mouth, grew from a murmur to a shout, and threw the grand stand into tumult, Lescault’s trained ear had caught the distant rumble of the Saturn. Giron was driving hard. Lescault saw that he passed the grand stand with the engine “wide open,” forcing the car to its utmost. Then the Saturn roared away, and out of the distance came another apparition that, flashing by in a blur of white, cast up dust and was gone. Down in the pits, Lescault, one of few who had recognized the white car, so great was its speed, drew his hideous features into a smile.

His stop-watch had told him that Stevenson’s first lap was at seventy-seven miles an hour, a gain of more than two minutes on the unbeaten Giron! And he grinned again when back of him men began to ask of one another in surprise:

“Who is this Stevenson? He’s beaten the life out of Giron. Who is he?”

No one knew anything but what the program had printed, and down in the pits the crippled little Frenchman was enjoying himself as he never had before. Each bewildered question was as music to his ears.

Quarter of an hour later the white “Ninety” and the red Saturn again crashed past, only this time Giron was behind. Even the advantage that his starting position had given him was gone, and Stevenson led by five minutes. So one lap followed another, a whirligig of blurred wheels and flaming hoods, sweeping round and round that oblong of Long Island country-side, strewing men and machines as it went.

Soon reports of accidents began to come in. In trying to keep up with the awful pace, the other drivers were overtaxing their machines. Already two cars had collapsed on the course, burying their crews beneath them. Others,—a score of them, with the Vegas, and the Germans, painted gray,—limping, had stopped at the repair pits, and Lescault had laughed. What chance had they with the white “Ninety” and his brain?

Complacently he saw Stevenson push his car past the Saturn a second time. Near Westbury he had driven wonderfully, and obtained a lead of more than a length of the course over the favorite. And this time, when the Saturn rushed by, Lescault saw that Giron had stopped his waving to the grand stand. Clever driver that he was, Giron now realized that the early lead of the “Ninety” was more than a fluke, more than sensational forcing of a car beyond its limits, only to have it collapse with the goal miles away. In Stevenson he had come to recognize a new driver of rare power, a rival worthy of his steel. All Giron’s attention was demanded on the wheel.

Another swift rimming of the course, and Lescault saw the “Ninety” slacken speed coming up the stretch. Stevenson would stop, probably for gasolene or water. And Lescault was glad. Indeed, fortune seemed to be favoring him that day. It was tremendously important that he have a word with Stevenson at this stage of the race. Lescault had remembered that it was at such a time in the Grand Prix that Giron had broken him—waited on a lonely stretch of road until he had tried to pass and then had ditched him.

“Don’t,” he told Stevenson, while mechanics swarmed about the throbbing “Ninety”—“don’t pass Giron again unless you can do it in front of the judges’ stand.”

Stevenson showed his amazement. A question was on his lips.

“Obey me!” snapped Lescault, anticipating him. “Remember you’re pledged to that—to carry out my commands. I’ve made you, and you must do just what I say,” he added.

And Stevenson, excited, abashed, regretting his moment of doubt, nodded, and turned to the men who were pouring gasolene down the thirsty throat of the “Ninety.” Then he swung into the seat, threw in his clutch, and went snorting away. Jean Lescault would be obeyed.

As though by telepathy, there came to Giron at this time the same thought that had made Lescault speak his warning. Stevenson must be done away with. As Giron had seen him draw steadily away lap by lap, displaying more and more daring and skill; as he had seen him manœuver as only a master could manœuver, put trick against trick, and, winning, outdo all who would cut him down; as he had watched the big “Ninety” roar by again and again, always about the same time, a “limited” on schedule, the keen Frenchman admitted finally that Stevenson’s was no half-charged sensation, but a decided menace.

Setting his mouth in a thin, cruel line, he made his plans. He would wait for this boy—wait as he had waited for Lescault years before. To him it was only an incident, a sweeping aside of an unforeseen obstacle that had risen between him and victory. That Stevenson might die, that a young and wonderfully brilliant driver might he maimed for life, did not interest him. The boy was in the way. He must go.

Giron waited patiently for the “Ninety” to draw near. Just as he was about to pass he would obey the law of the race—turn out and give room. Then he would veer in suddenly, and, to avoid collision, Stevenson would be forced into the ditch. In just that way he had disposed of Lescault and of others whose names do not matter. Snarling at his mechanician to warn him of the approach of the “Ninety,” Giron drove on. The wait, he felt, would not be long.

Drawn by William H. Foster

“ON IT CAME, FASTER THAN THE WIND” (SEE [PAGE 213])

But for some reason the “Ninety” never overtook him. It hung so close to his rear wheels that Giron could hear the crunch of the tires, the cries of its mechanician; but it came no nearer. Its front wheels were always just out of reach; but it never came farther. Stubbornly and tenaciously it hung like a shadow that would not shorten.

In his desperation Giron began jockeying. Slackening his speed almost imperceptibly, he waited grimly; but the “Ninety” slackened, too. For a moment Giron was puzzled; then, thinking it might be a coincidence, he lowered his pace even more, but the “Ninety” lowered, too. Suddenly suspicious, he tried again; but still the “Ninety” hung back. Then it burst upon Giron amazingly clear. How blind he had been! This was not Stevenson who refused to be tricked; this was no impetuous, lusty boy who couldn’t be tempted into the ditch. This was the cool mind of the master driver, the calm, scheming mind of Lescault—old Lescault back in the pits, the hideous cripple at whom he had spat, now pulling him down at the top of his career.

So they rushed into the straightaway, headed for the grand stand, and came booming and pounding until a report from one of the “Ninety’s” rear tires brought that car to a stop while the red Saturn whirled away in a screen of dust. Stevenson drove in on a flat tire, and, reaching the pits, shouted to his mechanics to hurry their work; and while he waited, chafing and fretting, Lescault clutched at his arm and said impressively:

“Remember, don’t pass Giron unless it’s in front of the judges’ stand. Remember you promised to obey.”

Then the “Ninety” rushed away. Somewhat nervous now, for the race was drawing to a close, Lescault saw the Saturn appear again and knew that Stevenson must come soon after. Impatiently he strained his ear, hoping to catch the rumble of the “Ninety” before it swung round the “Hairpin” into view of the stands. But no rumble came. Soon Stevenson was overdue. Concern and worry, then fear, followed upon impatience. Seconds grew into minutes, and to Lescault the minutes were as ages. He began to ask himself questions. What was wrong? Had Stevenson disobeyed orders?

Lescault feverishly jotted down some figures. Yes, the boy could have passed Giron over by Westbury; but Giron had swept by, and Stevenson—

The pitmen, now alarmed at the delay, had climbed out upon the side of the track. One of them, a little fellow, standing on the shoulders of the others, was trying to see far down the road. Lescault watched his face for some expression of relief, but the pitman’s worry seemed to grow.

“Stevenson’s hurt!”

In a trice the rumor had spread among the crowd. Wild stories spread. The minutes were now dragging on feet of lead—agonizing minutes to Lescault, who felt an overpowering weakness coming over him, a sickening of the heart, an overwhelming of conscience that undermined his iron nerve. Giron had beaten him again! His painstaking work, his self-denials, all the plans of years, had been for naught. And by using Stevenson,—God help him!—he had sent the boy to a fate perhaps worse than his own. Into the scarred face came sorrow.

Then he heard an exclamation; he saw the pitmen dancing about like children.

“He’s coming! He’s coming!” they cried.

Far down the road Lescault made out the white blur of the “Ninety.”

“Busted valve!” cried Stevenson as he jumped down. “Thought we’d never fix it.”

Lescault saw that the boyish face looked old, ages old, that his hands were moving nervously, his whole body tense with repressed eagerness.

“You’ve lost the lead,” a tireman shouted. “Giron’s a minute ahead!”

Lescault could have killed the speaker. The effect of his words was obvious. Stevenson’s nervousness increased.

“As bad as that!” he exclaimed. “Hurry it up, boys! Only two more laps—just enough to catch Giron.”

Swinging into the car, he threw on the engine, drowning the warning that Lescault was shouting, and rushed away. The grand stand was in an uproar as he swept past, but Stevenson did not hear. He heard only the words of the tireman, and kept repeating them:

“Giron’s a minute ahead. Giron’s a minute ahead.”

He now opened his engine to the limit, and driving faster than he had ever driven before, burst into the “S” turn and reeled round it on two wheels. Past Massapequa he whirled, dirt and oil flying in a trembling wall of brown. Downhill, over bridges, he rushed, the wind shrieking in his ears. Into the straight stretch of the Parkway he burst, the “Ninety” gathering momentum on the smooth road, faster and faster, until the front wheels, bending to the sonorous rhythm of the engine, jumped up and down in a weird dance.

Drawn by William H. Foster

“‘DON’T PASS GIRON AGAIN UNLESS YOU CAN DO IT IN FRONT OF THE JUDGES’ STAND’”

Yes, no speck of red had taken shape on the road ahead. The lead of the Saturn was even greater than he had feared. It must be still miles away, and Giron, supreme again, driving like the wind. That streak of red! If he could only see it, just to know that it really was within reach.

Then Stevenson caught a glimpse of car far ahead. An exclamation escaped him, only to leave him more grimly silent; for the car was gray, one of the Germans. Then he made out other cars,—white, green, and blue cars, the Jupiter, the Vegas, and the Crowns,—and soon he had overtaken them, roared past them, with their crews appalled at the awful speed, the awful daring. Now he began to curse the “Ninety” for not bearing him more swiftly, for not bringing to him that red-painted goal. And so he crashed, skidded, and battered through mile after mile, forgot the perils of “the Jericho,” the “S,” and the “Hairpin,” and drove in the grip of a mania, a boyish giant on whom the race had laid its spell.

Out of the distance there finally came to him the speck of red, a vague, blurry shape that quickly took on the lines of the Saturn. It gave him a sense of fierce pleasure, an unnatural desire to laugh aloud; and then he thought of Lescault, of his warning:

“Don’t pass Giron unless it’s in front of the judges’ stand.”

But surely Lescault could not mean for him to wait now—now when he was behind, when he had caught the red car and in a trice could snatch back a race almost lost! Of course Lescault didn’t mean that. Stevenson compressed his lips, pressed down on the accelerator, leaned slightly forward, his eyes peering over the steering-wheel.

A minute of terrific driving, and the “Ninety” had come near enough for Giron to hear the thunder of its exhausts. Employing a signal that racing crews have, he ordered his mechanician to watch its approach. The mechanician, after craning his head, turned swiftly around.

“He’s coming like the wind,” he bawled in Giron’s ear. “He’s driving like a madman!”

And Giron, who had waited patiently for this moment, who knew even when he had gained the lead that he could not hold it, that the “Ninety” was faster, the brain guiding it craftier, parted his lips as a panther does before the leap; for he thought again that the soul of Lescault was no longer driving the “Ninety,” that lusty, unthinking youth, mad with speed, had risen, overwhelming caution and sending Stevenson down into the ditch, as it had another years before.

“I’ll get him,” he murmured, and bent lower over the wheel.

Past Hicksville came the two cars, the “Ninety” creeping up at every turn of the wheel.

“Not here,” Giron told himself; “the crowd might see.”

Round “Death Turn,” they shot, skidded, righted in a whirl of dust, bellowed, and were gone down a lonely road, narrow, slippery, black with oil, the “Crossover,” which the crowds had avoided because of the marshy land on each side. Half a mile away the road lay over a swamp, and the ditch was deep. Not a soul was there.

As the cars rushed toward it, Giron almost imperceptibly lowered his speed just enough for the “Ninety” to come up before the swamp was crossed. Listening carefully, his ears attuned by long practice, he read the thunder of the “Ninety’s” engine, calculated to a foot how much nearer Stevenson was being borne with each detonation. Louder and louder grew the clamor, the harsh shrieking and rasping of machinery, the booming of the exhausts, until it deafened him. Then Giron acted.

Bracing his feet, he sank lower in the seat, gripped the wheel, and made as though to turn out, to obey the law of the race. Up crept the “Ninety” closer and closer, until with a snarl Giron threw over the wheel suddenly, tugged sharply, and, shooting his own car back across the road, blocked the way.

But, hours before that, Fate had made a workman blunder. The workman had put on more oil than safety allowed. The oil had made the surface slippery and dangerous at just this place. No driver had noticed it because none had tried to turn in it. But now, catching the big Saturn veering suddenly under high speed, the treacherous mixture of dirt and oil slid away from under the front wheels. With all the power of inanimate things breaking loose, the huge red car careened across the road. As though possessed, it ran to destruction, dug its flat snout into the embankment, lifted slowly end on end, swayed a moment, and, as the “Ninety” shot by, lurched forward, somersaulting down into the swamp.

Drawn by William H. Foster.     Half-tone plate engraved by R. Varley

“WITH ALL THE POWER OF INANIMATE THINGS BREAKING LOOSE, THE HUGE RED CAR CAREENED ACROSS THE ROAD”

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No sooner had Stevenson crossed the finish-line than the Mercury Motor-Car Company’s representatives telephoned Garden City and arranged for a banquet. But banquets were not for Stevenson that night. The fate of Giron lay heavy upon him. It had shadowed his joy in winning. The strain of the race over, he had broken down; and in breaking down it seemed to him that he had rushed to success over another man’s body.

At the hospital, where he had gone to inquire as soon as he could tear himself away from the swarms at the finish-line, the day nurse had told him that Giron would be a cripple for life. She had added that, oddly enough, a crippled little Frenchman had been there an hour ago, and that he, too, had been anxious to know about Giron.

“Good old Lescault!” thought Stevenson as he drove back to Krugs. “Always the first to think of a man in danger.”

Then he found himself wishing that Lescault were at his side. Now more than ever before he felt the need of the strange little Frenchman, the man who had made him, the man to whom he could now turn in this time of depression, of worried conscience, and even of half-guilt, he thought with a start. Had not Giron gone into the ditch to avoid a collision, to save him? He wasn’t the hero, he thought bitterly. It was Giron—poor Giron!

Stevenson found Lescault in his room. The little fellow had his chair drawn up close to the old-fashioned fireplace, in which wood was burning. He was smoking a cigarette, and if he heard Stevenson enter, he gave no sign. Instead, he gazed steadily at some charred bits of cardboard strewn about the edges of the fire—thick cardboard, and one piece only partly burned appeared to be a photograph.

The red glow of the fire shone on the little man’s face as Stevenson drew a chair beside him. In the flickering light the boy thought he saw him grin; but it might have been only the play of the shadows.

“It’s terrible about Giron, isn’t it, Jean?” he said abruptly, unable to endure the silence. “Think of it—that man at the height of his power suddenly crippled, never able to drive again, a great career ended so terribly!”

The little man at his side looked up.

“No, he’ll never drive again,” said Lescault.

Stevenson wondered at his tone, the look that had come into his face, the queer burning of his eyes, eery, unholy.

“Léon Giron will never drive again,” Lescault repeated. “It’s sure? You’re certain of it?” he asked suddenly, clutching Stevenson’s sleeve. “It’s sure, isn’t it?” he begged.

Bewildered, Stevenson said that it was so. Then he felt his flesh creep, for the little Frenchman had begun to smile, a horrible smile, with a hideous face, changing expression in the fire’s glow; began to rub his one hand over his knee, to slide it up and down creepily and unpleasantly, like a snake at play; to leer, and gloat over disaster not like a man, but a beast.

Horrified, unable to understand, Stevenson slid silently from his chair and backed slowly from the room. At the door he stopped, hesitated, and, as though unwilling to believe, looked again at the hunched little figure in the chair. There came to him faintly the sound of a voice chuckling!