Wide Awake Magazine, Volume 4, Number 3, January 10, 1916

by Various

CHAPTER II. Stanley’s Mission.

“I THINK I can walk,” were the first words she spoke, as they were dragged out of the water.

“I don’t think you can,” returned Stanley Downs positively. “I will carry you.”

He did so. There were half a dozen stone steps from the wooden boat landing to the top of the wall. From there, it was a trip of some five hundred feet to the veranda of the hotel, which faced the broad lake and the magnificent vista of mountain, where the verdure-clad slopes were bursting into the fresh green beauty of spring.

Stanley had recovered most of his strength by the time he was pulled from the water. Besides, he rather liked the task of carrying this dainty young woman, whose independence of spirit had manifested itself with the first glimmer of returning consciousness.

“Won’t you put me down, please?” she asked, with a touch of imperiousness.

“Couldn’t do it,” answered Stanley, as he hurried toward the veranda. “You would fall.”

“Nonsense! I’m not so weak as all that. Where is my car?”

“At the bottom of the lake, I guess.”

“And yours?”

“By its side—or perhaps underneath or on top of yours. We all went in together.”

Her eyes—deep-violet eyes they were, as Stanley Downs saw—were wide open by this time, and it was clear that her mind was working in orderly fashion, no matter how distressed she might be physically.

“I am too heavy for you to carry,” she persisted. “You are badly hurt. There is a great cut in your forehead. Put me down!”

“You don’t weigh much,” he laughed. “It steadies me to carry you. A hundred pounds or so in my arms is what I need to keep me balanced.”

“I weigh a hundred and thirty!” she burst out indignantly. “I may not be very big, but I play tennis and I swim as well as——”

“And drive a six-cylinder Fanchon,” threw in Stanley. “That keeps you in good condition. Yes, I understand that. But when a young lady is hurled out of a car into a lake, and especially when she has some little difficulty in getting clear of the wreckage, she must expect to feel a little shaken.”

“You threw that door of the car open just before we went over the wall,” she remarked with a smile. “That showed you had not lost your head. But for that I might not have got clear. I wonder you thought of it—so quickly.”

“Quickness of thought was needed at that stage of the proceedings if the thought was to do any good. Well, here we are at the veranda. I’ll carry you up the steps, and then you will be all right. Here is a lady who seems to know you.”

Stanley Downs put his burden down gently on the broad veranda and drew a large wicker chair to her. As he did so, a middle-aged, motherly sort of woman, in a light-blue morning gown, came running up and took the girl’s two hands in hers.

“Why, Miss Ranvelt! What is this? Was it you that went crashing into the lake? I heard that there had been an accident, but I never supposed——”

“Never supposed it was I, Mrs. Somers?” laughed the girl. “Why not? It was just as likely as to be anybody else. I’m always racing around in a motor car. You know that. Dad says I’ll get into a bad mess some time. It seems as if I came near it this morning.”

“Came near it?” grunted Karl, who had followed close behind Stanley. “How much closer does she want to come?”

Karl’s voice brought Stanley sharply to a recollection of something of great importance to himself that he had forgotten all about in the excitement—even after he had found himself safe, with the girl in his arms.

He waved a farewell to the young lady, who was being hurried away to the housekeeper’s own rooms, for dry clothes and general attention, and turned to Karl:

“The money?”

“It went down with the car,” replied Karl. “I had no time to get at it, and you were in the other car. It was in the door pocket in front, with the latch fastened. It ought to be there now.”

“Yes, yes!” agreed Stanley nervously. “It ought. The door pocket is not waterproof. But it will keep some of the water away, perhaps. Anyhow, it will keep it all in one place. Then there is a thick wrapping of brown paper over it. That ought to help.”

“Twenty thousand dollars, isn’t it?” asked Karl.

“Hush! No need to tell everybody,” warned Stanley. “But that’s what there is. A little more than twenty thousand.”

“Hello, Stan!” broke in a cheery voice, as a brawny brown hand seized Stanley’s. “What have you been doing to yourself? You’re soaking wet. By George! So is Karl! What in thunder is it all about?”

“Fell into the lake,” replied Stanley briefly. “Where did you come from. Clay?”

“Adirondacks. Cold as the deuce up there! Too early in the year; so I just turned my gas wagon in this direction, and I’m bound for New York. It is the only place for civilized beings in May.”

Clay Varron was a member of the Thracian Club—the athletic organization in New York to which Stanley Downs also belonged—and the two young men were good friends. Their mutual liking was based on respect, for both were clean-living, bright young fellows, who enjoyed athletic sports as earned recreation, without making them the principal business in life.

Among other reasons for Clay Varron and Stanley Downs being good comrades was that both were ardent motorists. Clay had done seventy miles an hour on the road, and Stanley Downs would have beaten that record, in the opinion of the Thracian Club, if he had not been dissuaded on the ground that more than seventy miles an hour away from a regular track would be idiocy, rather than good sportsmanship.

“Got any clothes with you?” asked Stanley.

“Plenty! I’ve engaged a room here at the hotel. Come up to it until you get one for yourself. Where’s my man? Where the deuce——Oh, here you are!” he added, as a trim-looking fellow, with “body servant” written all over him, stood at his employer’s elbow. “What’s the number of my room here at the Ridgeview, Moran?”

“Forty-three, sir. Suite—bedroom, sitting room, and bath. Baggage is there already. Clothes laid out, too.”

Clay Varron winked at Stanley Downs, and grinned pleasantly.

“I believe if I were in a shipwreck at night in the middle of the Atlantic, Moran would have my clothes laid out in regular order, so that I could be drowned properly dressed,” he said, with a chuckle. “Well, there’s nothing like doing your work right, whether you are President of the United States or a valet. Come on! We’ll get you out of those wet rags in two minutes, once you are in my room. Your chauffeur can look out for himself, I suppose?”

While Karl sought warmth and dry clothes in another part of the great, rambling hotel—finally bringing up with a chauffeur he knew—Stanley Downs went up to Clay Varron’s apartments.

Half an hour later, Stanley and Clay sat at the window of the private sitting room, which overlooked the lake from the second story, while Stanley told his story to Varron.

“There’s not much to it, Clay. You know Colonel Prentiss and some other men are managing this big automobile race for the Lawrence gold cup and a purse of twenty thousand dollars?”

“Of course I know it. Isn’t that one of the reasons I’m hustling back to New York? I want to hear what they think of the race at the Thracian—first-hand. It’s one week from to-day, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And tickets are being taken up very fast, I’m told. I want to get parking space for two machines. Where’s the best place to look for the tickets? I’m told the new speedway will be a wonder. One man told me that there will be accommodation for nearly a hundred thousand people to see the races.”

“Pretty nearly that,” admitted Stanley. “You can get tickets in New York. I’ll manage that for you.”

“Why? Are you interested?” asked Clay Varron, rather surprised.

“Only as an official of the bank of Burwin & Son, in New York City. My uncle, Richard Burwin, is the sole owner of the bank, as I think you know.”

Varron nodded, and waved a hand for Stanley Downs to continue.

“Because he is the sole owner, he insists on doing things in his own way. Colonel Prentiss has been selling many tickets in Buffalo, and he found himself with more cash than he wanted to take care of. He is like my uncle in the way of having notions, and he will not do business with any bank except Burwin & Son. That is why he would not deposit any of his cash in banks at Buffalo or elsewhere, as he might have done.”

“I see. Drive ahead, Stan! Get down to cases!”

“My uncle sent me to Buffalo to get twenty thousand dollars that Colonel Prentiss wanted to deposit with us. I was not allowed to use the railroads—I didn’t want to, for that matter—but was to go in my own car, with Karl, who is my uncle’s own chauffeur, to drive when I got tired, and to help me guard the money.”

“Swell idea!” observed Clay Varron. “But I never knew the day when Stanley Downs couldn’t take care of himself—and of anything he was told to keep safely.”

Stanley got up from his chair and strode up and down the room. In a suit of light clothes belonging to Clay Varron, which fitted him almost as well as if they had been made for him, Stanley was a fine-looking specimen of the American man in his twenties.

His erect carriage, firm jaw, quick eye, and alert bearing were all those of the young man who “does things.” Even the troubled expression that drew his brows together and made him bite his lip impatiently, only seemed to accentuate the firmness of his character.

“Now I am in trouble, Varron,” he said, after a short silence. “When my car took a header into the lake, out there——”

“Great Scott! Was that what it did?” interrupted Clay excitedly.

“Yes. But that’s nothing in itself,” declared Stanley hurriedly, waving aside further ejaculations. “What troubles me is that twenty thousand dollars in bills, which were tied up in a package and placed in one of the door pockets of the car, went down with it.”

“Good heavens!”

“I dare say the money is still in the door pocket,” continued Stanley. “But what use is that, when the car is at the bottom of the lake? It is between fifty and sixty feet deep, right off the edge of the promenade in front of this hotel.”

“So I’ve heard. But that isn’t deep enough to lose your car for you. I see they are working at it now. Look!”

Clay Varron pointed out of the window, and they saw that twenty or thirty men were manipulating ropes that dropped into the water. They were pulling at them with a big motor truck as well as several teams of horses. Evidently the crowd had something attached to the ropes under water, which was giving the motor truck and horses all they could do to drag it out.

“That’s good!” exclaimed Stanley. “I didn’t think they would get at it so soon. Ah! I see! Karl is out there directing things. That young fellow is a wonder, Clay. Let’s go out!”

It was just as Clay Varron and Stanley Downs reached the veranda that the big Archimedes motor car was drawn to the surface of the lake and thence to the boat landing, which was almost level with the top of the water.

Stanley rushed down the steps and laid his hand on the door pocket. It was in full view as the car lay on its side.

The next moment he gave vent to a groan of dismay.

The door pocket was empty!

---

CHAPTER III.
An Enemy by Chance.

FRANTICALLY, Stanley Downs searched all over the interior of the big car. It did not seem to be much damaged, although it was soaked with water and showed mud where it had struck the bottom of the lake.

There were no signs of the packet of money. The door pocket seemed to have been wrenched open, and it was easy to imagine that the money might have slipped out as the machine tumbled over.

For a few moments Stanley could hardly realize the full extent of his misfortune. He soon made sure that the package was not lying anywhere in the car. Karl, too, searched carefully, without result.

“Get the car to the road as soon as you can, Karl,” directed Stanley, forcing himself to speak calmly. “Then run it into the garage and overhaul it. We shall probably go on to New York to-day.”

“Very well, sir.”

“How about the other car, the Fanchon? Are they going to get it up without much trouble?”

“I think so,” replied Karl. “But it was underneath our car, and it may take all day. I’m afraid there isn’t much left of the Fanchon. Bits of it are floating on the water. You can see some of the wooden spokes of the wheels, and one of the mud guards came up on the grappling irons a while ago.”

“My poor car!” exclaimed a sweet voice behind them. “You really think it is done for, then?”

“Why, Helen!” cried Clay Varron, swinging around. “Were you driving that Fanchon? What the deuce made you do it? I have often heard your father tell you that you must never drive a new car until he has tested it thoroughly himself.”

“Well, I tested this one for him,” laughed Helen Ranfelt. “I don’t think he will have any more trouble with it. If it had not been for this gentleman,” smiling at Stanley, “he might not have had any more trouble with his daughter, either.”

“It was a perilous proceeding all around,” said Stanley. “But I am relieved to see that it had no serious outcome—except for the car. By the way, Clay,” he went on, turning to Varron, “perhaps you won’t mind vouching for me as a respectable member of society to Miss——”

“What? Never been introduced?” cried Clay, astonished. “Well, well! This is Mr. Stanley Downs, of New York—Miss Helen Ranfelt. You know her father, L. K. Ranfelt—Stanley, by name, at least. There is their home up there on the mountain. You can just see it through the foliage—that white house, with the golden cupola.”

“Of course I have heard of Mr. Ranfelt,” returned Stanley, when he had acknowledged the introduction with a bow, and had absorbed a most fascinating smile from the young lady. “Who has not? His mines in Nevada——”

“Oh, yes!” broke in Helen Ranfelt. “That is always the way. Everybody has heard that dad has made many millions out of his mines, and that they are still producing. But hardly any one knows that he would be a great man, even if he had never got to be a millionaire. You ought to see him drive a Fanchon, Mr. Downs—or any other car! No fear of his driving into a lake. He makes a car do just what he likes. And it is the same with everything else he does.”

Clay Varron smiled approvingly.

“That’s so, Helen. He’s a mighty smart man, and I’ll say it, even though he is my uncle. By the way, now that I’ve met you, I guess I’ll drive you home—if you want to go. I haven’t seen Uncle Larry for more than a year.”

“I heard that you’ve lost something from your car, Mr. Downs,” said Helen. “Some money. Don’t you think you can recover it?”

“I’m afraid not,” was the doleful reply. “The lake is fifty feet deep right here, and much more as it approaches the center. It was a bundle of bank notes, wrapped up in paper. The water would destroy them in a very short time, and there is little chance of dredging up the fragments. No, I’m afraid it is a dead loss.”

“I am very sorry.”

Her feminine tact told her it would be better to say nothing more about it. The square jaw of Stanley Downs, as well as the fighting glint in his gray eyes, suggested that he would deal with the misfortune in his own way, and that he would not ask for sympathy from any one.

“I shall have to communicate with my uncle, Mr. Burwin, in New York,” he remarked, after a short pause, during which it struck him that he should make some acknowledgment of her expression of sorrow. “The money was his, and I was taking it to our bank.”

“Burwin & Son, you know, Helen,” interjected Varron.

“I did think I would go directly to New York,” continued Stanley. “But I think I will call him up on ‘long distance,’ and stay here till I find out whether I can save any of the bills.”

“Nothing much can be done to-day, I should say,” observed Varron. “You will have to get dredging machinery from somewhere—Poughkeepsie, probably. That will take at least twenty-four hours, by the time it is all set up.”

“Won’t you be my father’s guest for to-night, Mr. Downs?” asked Helen. “He will be pleased to see you, especially when he hears that you have saved his daughter’s life. I am a great deal of a nuisance to him, but he thinks something of me, nevertheless.”

“Well, I should say he does!” laughed Clay Varron. “Helen makes him do just what she wants. I don’t think anybody else on earth could do that.”

The end of it all was that Stanley Downs accepted Helen Ranfelt’s invitation, and about six o’clock that evening Clay Varron drove his big car under the porte-cochère of Lawrence K. Ranfelt’s castlelike mansion on a mountaintop, to let Stanley jump down to help out the young girl who had been by his side during the ride up from the lake, the glimmer of which could be made out miles below.

Karl had been instructed to watch the attempts to get the package of bills from the water, and to let Stanley know by telephone if there should be any result. The stolid chauffeur could be depended on. His faithfulness had been proved in years of service, and his honesty was beyond question.

Under the influence of a good dinner and cheerful conversation, Stanley was able to look upon his heavy loss with a more hopeful eye afterward.

Lawrence K. Ranfelt was a man of fifty or thereabouts, with a jolly manner, a clean-cut, shaven face, and grip when he shook hands that conveyed sincerity that won Stanley’s confidence at once.

What particularly pleased Stanley Downs was that his host did not say much about the part Stanley had taken in saving his daughter from death. All he did was to shake the young man’s hand and whisper, after a ten minutes’ talk alone with his daughter:

“Helen has told me, Mr. Downs. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. That sounds stupidly inadequate, but I mean it. She says that if you had not dragged her from the car down there at the bottom of the lake, she must have been drowned. You had opened the door before the accident, so that she could get out. That was something everybody might not have thought of. But even then she would have died if it had not been for what you did afterward.”

This was just before dinner, after Stanley had put on evening clothes from Clay Varron’s rather extensive wardrobe, and when the men were in the library, waiting for the call.

“By the way, Mr. Downs, you have not met Mr. Burnham—Victor Burnham,” added Ranfelt, as a tall, lean man, who might have been any age between thirty and fifty, but who really was thirty-five, slipped into the library. “Burnham has been associated with me in the West for years. He was my superintendent when I made my first good strike, and he is still looking out for the Ranfelt interests in the West. But he is not a mere superintendent now. His holdings in Nevada mines have made him a millionaire several times over. At least, that’s what people say. Eh, Burnham?”

Victor Burnham shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly, as he shook hands with Stanley in a rather grudging fashion.

“People say many things that would be better unsaid!” he growled. “My private affairs are my own.”

Lawrence K. Ranfelt turned away, with a careless laugh. He knew the saturnine disposition of his old-time assistant, and never took notice of his surly manner. But Stanley Downs decided, in his own mind, that he didn’t like Victor Burnham.

They went in to dinner now, and Stanley was seated by the side of Helen. Not only that, but the young lady gave him as much of her attention and conversation as she could, without being actually discourteous to the other guests. Two handsome girls, her classmates at Vassar, were in the dinner party.

It was evident that Stanley had made a good impression on Miss Ranfelt. He, on his part, thoroughly enjoyed himself. He could flirt with a pretty girl as well as the next one, and Helen Ranfelt was undeniably extremely pretty.

“What’s the matter with that fellow?” thought Stanley once, when he happened to look across the table and found Burnham glowering at him. “Wonder if I’ve given offense to Mr. Burnham?”

The truth was that he had given offense. Victor Burnham had gone so far as to tell L. K. Ranfelt that he would like to marry his daughter. The mine owner’s reply was that he could not interfere with her desires in the way of matrimony. If Helen wanted to marry Burnham, why, he would consider it, then. For the present, he had nothing to say.

“You give me permission to try for her, then?” Burnham had said.

“Sure! Go in and win—if you can. I can trust Helen to act according to her conscience.”

This conversation had taken place on this very afternoon, and Burnham had been trying to make up his mind when he would speak to Helen. Now in came this young man from New York, who had the advantage of having rescued her from death, and it was evident that the girl had eyes for nobody else. Burnham felt that he had good reason for glowering at Stanley Downs.

It was after dinner, when the four men were in the billiard room, enjoying cigars and cigarettes before joining the ladies in the drawing-room, that the subject of the big motor race came up.

“I am interested in it,” remarked Ranfelt casually. “I have a few thousand dollars invested, and I certainly mean to see it pulled off. Colonel Frank Prentiss is an old friend of mine, and I have no doubt he will make it a success. I wish I could drive in the race. It would be an easy way of picking up twenty thousand dollars, to say nothing of the cup, which is said to be worth a thousand or so.”

“The Lawrence Cup,” murmured Stanley Downs thoughtfully. “By the way, Mr. Ranfelt, who is offering the cup? Do you know?”

Lawrence K. Ranfelt brushed the question aside, with a careless wave of the hand, as he let a column of cigar smoke issue from his lips.

“What does it matter who offers it?” he demanded, with a flush rather deeper than his usual color on his cheeks, while his keen eyes danced with amusement. “It will not belong to anybody until it has been won for three years in succession, on the Prentiss Speedway. Burnham, here, thinks he can carry it off for the first time.”

“I’ll try,” growled Burnham. “As for the person who offers it, I don’t see any use in making a mystery of that. It will all come out later. It is Mr. Ranfelt who is giving it. He uses his first name, Lawrence, instead of his surname—that’s all.”

Lawrence K. Ranfelt burst out into his jolly laugh, as he slapped Burnham on the shoulder.

“Yes, that’s true,” he admitted. “But there is something else, much more interesting than the fact that I have hung up the cup for competition. That is that Helen has publicly announced—at home, of course—that she will think the man who wins this cup the greatest hero she knows.”

“Indeed?” asked Stanley, laughing. “That is enough to make anybody want to be entered in the race. The twenty thousand dollars would be nothing in comparison.”

“Well, I don’t know,” declared Ranfelt, more soberly. “That’s a good sum of money. I have nothing to do with the purse, however. The Speedway Association, through Colonel Frank Prentiss, is offering that. And the best of the purse is that it belongs, out and out, to the man who wins it. He won’t have to go on driving in other races, year after year, as he will to become the permanent holder of the cup.”

Stanley Downs did not reply. But he was thoughtful, and when he reached the drawing-room with the others, he had so little to say that Helen Ranfelt, obviously piqued, was especially gracious to Victor Burnham, and hardly noticed Stanley at all.

“I believe I’ll do it!” was what Stanley kept on repeating to himself.

He was saying it mentally when he reached his bedroom a few hours later, and gazed out of the window at the long winding road down the mountain.

“Seventy miles was Clay Varron’s record in a Kronite car, on that very road below, there,” he mused. “Seventy miles an hour on an ordinary road, with all the possibilities of loose stones, holes, and other cars meeting him. What could a man do in a good car on the Prentiss Speedway? The record at Sheepshead Bay is more than a hundred and two for three hundred and fifty miles.” Me sighed dubiously. “That’s some traveling, keeping it up for more than three hours.”

Stanley Downs went to bed.

---

CHAPTER IV.
A Way Out.

“I’M sorry nothing has been found of your money, Mr. Downs. But, to be frank, I don’t see how they could get it for you. Paper money was never meant to be soaked in water and used afterward. The twenty thousand dollars belonged to the bank, I understand?”

It was Lawrence K. Ranfelt talking, after breakfast, the next morning. He and Stanley, both early risers, sat on the veranda and gazed across at the fresh verdure of the hills and the slowly rising mist from the great hollows. They were alone. Mr. Ranfelt’s manner was very serious.

“The money had been Colonel Prentiss’,” answered Stanley. “But, of course, when it came into my hands, as a representative of Burwin & Son’s banks, we were responsible for its safely. The loss will fall on the bank.”

“I suppose Burwin & Son can stand it?”

“Naturally. But that is not the point. My uncle, Richard Burwin, does not believe in mistakes—or accidents. He holds that the first always imply negligence, and that accidents never happen when proper care is taken.”

“I don’t agree with your uncle,” snapped Ranfelt. “It was not your fault that you fell into the lake yesterday. If you hadn’t been trying to keep that harum-scarum girl of mine out of mischief, you would never have got into trouble. However, we won’t talk about that. What about your uncle?”

“Only that I feel as if I cannot tell him I have lost twenty thousand dollars of the bank’s money.”

“H’m! What are you going to do about it?”

“I won’t do anything for a few days, except to wire my uncle I will not be in New York just yet. He will know I have some reason for delay.”

“Won’t think you’ve lost the money?”

Stanley Downs winced at this blunt suggestion.

“It will never occur to him. Besides, I may find it before I have to tell him anything about it. I have not given up hope yet. The men are still dredging the lake.”

“I am afraid there is little chance of your getting the twenty thousand dollars if you depend on its being fished out of the lake,” declared Lawrence Ranfelt, shaking his head.

“I think that, too,” was Stanley’s unexpected outburst. “I am not depending on that. In this big motor race at the Prentiss Speedway, the money prizes go to the drivers, while the cup will be awarded to the car. I have been asked to drive a Thunderbolt car in this race, and have been considering it for several days. This decides me. I will drive in the race.”

He got up, as he said this, stretching his arms and expanding his chest, as if glad to have come to a conclusion on a perplexing matter.

“What’s that?” almost shouted Ranfelt. “Do you really mean it?”

“Indeed I do! Why not? I can drive, and I want the money.”

“But entering the race does not insure the money for you,” the millionaire reminded him.

“Nothing is sure in sport, any more than in other things,” answered Stanley. “But if I don’t enter, I shall not have even a fighting chance. That is what I want—a fighting chance at winning twenty thousand dollars.”

“Fine!” exclaimed L. K. Ranfelt, as he took Stanley’s hand. “I am glad to hear you say this. It is the way to deal with a difficult situation. I wish you luck. Although,” he added slowly, “perhaps I ought not to wish you that, if I am to be consistent.”

“Why not?” asked Stanley in some surprise.

“Because Victor Burnham is going to drive in the race, with a Columbiad,” replied Ranfelt. “It is not generally known, but I knew it. Burnham drove his trial two-mile dash two or three days ago, qualifying as an entrant. He did the two miles in a minute and a third—rather less. That gave him something to spare. If you are going to drive, you haven’t much time. I’d advise you to get to the track and try out your car right away. You were there yesterday, I understand.”

“Yes. I meant to take the money to the bank in New York, and then go right back. I promised to give the Thunderbolt owners my decision by telegraph to-day. Can I telephone to the telegraph office from here?”

“Come into my private office. I have a phone there.”

It took nearly ten minutes to get the telegraph office, fifteen miles away, and then Stanley Downs had to repeat his message twice before the operator could catch it and repeat it back for verification.

“Yes. That’s right,” called out Stanley Downs at last. “‘Moussard Automobile Co., Buffalo. Will drive your Thunderbolt car in Lawrence Cup Race next Thursday. Coming to Buffalo to-morrow for trial. Stanley Downs.’ Get that?”

There was a pause, and Stanley Downs turned from the table, with a smile, as he hung up the transmitter. When he swung around, he found himself facing Helen Ranfelt, who was panting with excitement, and Victor Burnham, who scowled.

“Oh, Mr. Downs, isn’t that splendid?” cried Helen.

“I don’t know that it is,” said Stanley, laughing. “Except to me. I like driving fast, and, from all I can judge, there will be some rapid moving at the Prentiss Speedway next Thursday.”

“You have to go not less than eighty-five miles an hour to qualify,” grunted Burnham. “I suppose you know that?”

“I have studied the conditions of the race so often that T think I am familiar with them all,” replied Stanley, as he turned away.

Helen Ranfelt followed him out to the veranda and took his arm.

“Mr. Downs,” she whispered, and he noted a tremble in her soft tones.

“Yes?”

“Victor Burnham is a dangerous man. He has been annoying me for some time, although I never let dad know. If I had, there would have been a dreadful scene. I’m sure, because dad never can control his temper. Now he is getting worse. He came to me this morning, as soon as I was downstairs, telling me he had something important to say.”

“Yes?”

“I could only tell him to say it, for I have never told him he must not speak to me—although I should like to do so.”

“But if he annoys you——” began Stanley.

“I am afraid you don’t understand. Dad thinks he is a good business man—and I suppose he is. Besides, dad says he is not a bad fellow at heart. That’s the way he expresses it. Only he is a little gruff. Dad says some of the finest men alive are like that.”

Stanley nodded, without speaking. He had seen enough of the good-natured, easy-going Lawrence Ranfelt to understand that the mine owner would make excuses for anybody, so long as a fair outside was presented.

“Victor Burnham has asked my father if he may ask me to marry him. He says dad told him to go ahead. If I don’t believe what he says. I can ask my father. That’s what Mr. Burnham told me to-day.”

“The cad!”

“He also said this morning that he had been told that I would make a hero of the man who won this motor race.”

“That was true, wasn’t it?” queried Stanley, with a smile. “Your father told us that last night. But I understood you had said it only in a playful way, so that no decent man would take it otherwise.”

“I believe I did say so—and, indeed, I think it wonderfully brave for any man to dash around a track at such an awful speed. You see. I know something about fast driving. I often go along the road, myself, at a mile a minute. But the worst of it all is that Victor Burnham pretends to believe that what I said about regarding a man as a ‘hero’ means that I will say ‘yes,’ if he asks me to marry him.”

“You mean if he wins the race?”

“Yes. But I’m afraid he will. You know that he is to drive a Columbiad car, and that that car is regarded as the most powerful and speediest machine that ever has been produced. Everybody is afraid of it.”

“I have heard that it is a good machine,” admitted Stanley. “But until it has been tried out in a real competition with the best cars that can be brought against it, that is only talk. No one knows for certain what the Columbiad can do, because it is a French machine, and has never been seen in action in America, except at the trial, a few days ago.”

“That was when Mr. Burnham qualified as a driver, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. He did his two miles in one minute and twenty seconds. Pretty good going. But I believe I can beat that in the Thunderbolt.”

“I am so glad you are going to drive, Mr. Downs. I happened to hear what you were saying over the telephone just now, and I hope you will win.”

“Thanks!”

“Oh, it isn’t only because I want you to be successful,” she confessed, with the candor that she inherited from her plainspoken father. “I want you to beat Mr. Burnham.”

“And all the others in the race, too, eh?” he rejoined, with a humorous curling of the lip. “He won’t be the only other driver, you know, Miss Ranfelt.”

“He will be your chief competitor, I am afraid. If you beat him, you will win. I feel sure of that.”

“Possibly,” assented Stanley Downs thoughtfully. “It is said this Columbiad is a terror. I suppose Burnham is a good driver?”

“One of the best in the country, dad says. He’s cool, strong, and he has no nerves. Dad has told me of the way he held his own against some of the rough men at the mines in days gone by. It is because he is so brave and powerful that dad likes him, I think.”

“Well, I’ll try to beat him,” smiled Stanley.

“You must do it!” she whispered tensely. “If he should win this race I would be afraid of him. He would come to me, and—and——”

“Marry you by force? Hardly that, I think. We don’t do that kind of thing nowadays. Besides, your father can take care of you. Why should you fear this fellow?”

“I don’t know why I should, but I do,” she confessed. “He has a way of carrying things before him in a savage way that gets him what he wants. If you beat him, he will not have an excuse to annoy me.”

Stanley was rather astonished that this plucky young girl should show so much terror. He had seen her driving her big car down the winding road, showing no actual fear, even when it was inevitable that she should plunge into the lake. Yet now, as she talked of this Victor Burnham, she trembled so that she could hardly stand, and her voice quivered pitifully.

“I’ll take care of Mr. Burnham, both on the track and elsewhere, if it should be necessary,” Stanley assured her.

Hardly were the words out of his mouth, when a footstep close by made him turn. He looked straight into the malevolent eyes of the man he had been talking about.

For a moment the two gazed at each other defiantly. Then, without speaking, Victor Burnham turned on his heel and went into the house.

“He heard you, I am afraid!” murmured the girl.

“Just as well, if he did,” replied Stanley, with a smile. “He will know what to expect if he doesn’t behave himself.”

“Hello, Stan!” broke in the cheery tones of Clay Varron. “I’ve just heard the news.”

“What?” cried Stanley, half hoping that the news might be good for him. “They haven’t found the money in the lake, have they?”

“No, old man! I wish it was that. What I meant was that I’m pleased you are going to be in that race. Mr. Ranfelt and I are going to Buffalo with you. We want to see you do your trial. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Mind?” ejaculated Stanley. “It is the very thing I should have suggested, if I had thought you and Mr. Ranfelt would consent.”

“And I’m going, too,” put in Helen decidedly.

“So will I, if I may be permitted,” added the surly voice of Victor Burnham, as he stepped forward. “I’m told the Thunderbolt racer the company has ready is quite a traveler. I should like to see how you will handle it.”

“I will drive you over in my car, Stan, if you like,” said Clay, ignoring Burnham. “Mr. Ranfelt says he will go in his own car, and I suppose he will take Helen with him.”

Nobody asked Victor Burnham how he intended to go. But Helen knew he had come from Buffalo in his own car, and, of course, he could go the same way.

“Will you take me with you, Ranfelt?” he asked, as the mine owner stepped out to the veranda.

Helen managed to catch her father’s eye, and he gave Burnham a prompt negative.

“All right, Ranfelt. I can drive my own car,” he said, with an evil grin. “It will be a little lonely for me, but we can all go together, even if we are in separate cars.”

“The blackguard!” thought Stanley Downs. “I feel as if he and I would come to grips some time—and not on the speedway only.”

---

CHAPTER V.
For a Sure Thing.

IT was two days later when Victor Burnham, with a raincoat covering his ordinary raiment, and a peaked cap pulled well down over his brows, stood behind a big racing car in a garage in a back street in Buffalo. With him was a man whose oily overalls and blackened hands proclaimed him a garage employee.

“Now, Dan,” whispered Burnham, as he glanced about to make sure they could not be overheard. “You understand that if I win this race you get a clear thousand dollars.”

“When do I get it?” inquired Dan coldly. “I want it as soon as you run your car off the track.”

“Dan Saltus, you’re just as suspicious now as you ever were,” said Burnham, grinning in a mirthless way. “When you were engineer for me, out in Nevada, I knew that you did not trust anybody—not even your best friend.”

“Best friend, eh?” snorted Mr. Saltus, passing a grimy hand across his almost as grimy face. “Meaning yourself, I suppose?”

“Meaning myself,” assented Burnham. “I was your best friend, and I am now. You would not have this nice little job as foreman of this garage if I hadn’t got it for you.”

“That’s right. Although I don’t know that it is such a nice little job, at that. The men I have around me are all dubs, and if I want anything done right I have to get at it myself. But, never mind that. Drive ahead with what you were going to say.”

Victor Burnham stepped to the door of the garage and looked up and down the short street. It was between six and seven o’clock in the evening, after general business hours, and no one was about. The garage itself was empty but for Burnham and Dan Saltus, the foreman.

“What I was going to say,” resumed Burnham, as he stepped again to the back of the racing car, “is that I have to win this Lawrence Cup.”

“That’s what they’ll all say,” grunted Dan. “I mean, all the drivers.”

“Possibly. But it’s real business with me. I’ve got to win!”

“You’ll take a sporting chance, I suppose?”

“No!” snarled Burnham. “I won’t—if I can help it. This has to be a sure thing for me. Chance won’t do.”

Dan Saltus took up some cotton waste and wiped away a streak of black oil he had just observed on one of the brake rods of the gray racer. It enabled him to avoid a response.

“This car is better than anything to be driven in that race—except one.”

“The Thunderbolt?”

“Yes.”

“I see. But what are you going to do about it?”

Victor Burnham glanced furtively about him. Then he moved close to the grimy mechanic, still busy with his waste, and whispered in his ear:

“What can you do about it?”

“I don’t get you.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” insisted Burnham. “But you don’t want to admit it. You’re not a bonehead exactly.”

“Thanks! But you’ll have to come across more plainly than this if you want a straight answer from me,” declared Dan doggedly.

“Very well. I will.”

There was utter silence for perhaps a quarter of a minute. Victor Burnham hardly knew how to frame in words what he wanted to say. Like most men of his type, he was always fearful of placing himself in the power of anybody.

“Of course, Dan, I know you are straight with me. I’m not afraid of your giving any of this conversation away. Even if you did, it would not make any difference. No one would believe you.”

“No one would have to,” retorted Dan. “I don’t talk about my private business. And this is plumb private. Go on, Mr. Burnham. You are so leery of what you say, that anybody would think you’re planning a murder. What’s it all about?”

“If that Thunderbolt had some little thing the matter with it, so that it did not yield all the power it has generally been able to deliver, or so that it would gradually give out—without danger to the driver, of course——”

“Nothing like that could happen without danger to the driver,” threw in Dan. “When a car is going ninety or a hundred miles an hour, or even fifty, there is a chance of the driver’s neck being broken if anything slips. You know that, Mr. Burnham.”

“It does not always follow,” insisted Burnham, “especially when it is only some little thing. In every big race a lot of cars draw out before the finish with some small thing the matter.”

“What, for instance?” growled Dan.

“A flaw in a connecting rod, engine trouble of some kind, carburetor not working just right—any one of a dozen things. I leave it to you what to do. But I want the Thunderbolt to come in behind the Columbiad I drive.”

“Why can’t you drive on the level?” demanded Dan sulkily. “You have a car here that can walk away from any of them. I know. I’ve driven it myself, and I saw you in the trial. Why, you did your ninety miles and over—that is, an average of that—in your trial, and you had any amount of power that you didn’t call on. Why don’t you go into the race and trust to your machine? That’s what I’d do.”

Victor Burnham ripped out an oath in a low tone that made up in foulness what it lacked in volume.

“I’m not asking what you’d do,” he rasped. “I want you to do this thing for me, and I’ll pay you for doing it.”

“You will give me the thousand you promised if you win the race? I agreed to take that, but it was only for seeing that the machine was in perfect condition. I didn’t bargain for any real crooked work for that money,” growled Dan.

“It was understood.”

“No, it wasn’t. If you want anything more than straight goods from me, you’ve got to hand over something more than a thousand—a great deal more.”

“I’ll give you another thousand.”

“Making two thousand altogether?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll do what you want me to. But—wait a moment. One thousand will have to be paid, whether you win or not. I’m not taking all the chances. Suppose I get at the Thunderbolt, and I’m seen. Where would I come in? It might take a thousand dollars for a lawyer to clear me. I’ve got to have a thousand before I’ll take the contract. You know I’m square. I won’t take your money and not do the job.”

Victor Burnham reflected with deeply contracted brows, and as he did so, any casual observer would have said that he was the very incarnation of evil. Indeed, he might have been plotting murder, as Dan Saltus had intimated, so far as could be told from the expression of his dark face.

“Here’s the thousand, Dan,” he said at last, drawing a wallet from an inside pocket. “Do you promise to get at the Thunderbolt?”

“For a thousand dollars—yes,” replied Dan, holding out his hand for the money.

Without speaking, Victor Burnham opened the wallet and counted ten hundred-dollar bills into the garage foreman’s hand.

“I’d rather have had it in smaller bills,” grumbled Dan. “It isn’t so easy to get a century changed without people wondering where you got it. But I dare say I can get away with it.”

He rolled the money into a small package and put it in a pocket under his overalls, looking at the racing car before him as he did so.

“This Columbiad is in good shape, I suppose, Dan. Nothing hurt it in the trial?”

“Not a thing. I have been over it carefully, and taken a long time to do it. She’s ready for the race this minute, if you wanted to take her out. I’ll be your mechanician, of course—as I was in the trial—and I’ll know that she’s tuned up to concert pitch when we line up. I’ve got plenty of gas in her. But I’ll draw it all out and put in fresh gas before the race, of course. I’ve got the very best grade of gasoline on the market, and I’ve strained it three times already, to make sure she’s clean.”

Victor Burnham nodded perfunctorily at all this. He knew Dan Saltus would look after all details. Gasoline, water, oil, and every part of the ugly gray machine, with its great white figure 7 painted on it in several places, would be exactly right. That was not what he had to think about.

What troubled him was that the Thunderbolt—a wonderful racer that never had been beaten by an American car so far—would also be in perfect condition. With everything else equal, he feared that Stanley Downs could push ahead of the Columbiad.

“I don’t know that he could do it,” muttered Burnham, half aloud. “But he might. That’s what has to be prevented.”

“I’ll prevent it all right,” declared Dan, who had overheard. “Do you want to look her over any more? If you don’t, I’ll take her to the storeroom and lock her in.”

“I’ve seen enough of her,” replied Burnham. “Take her up.”

Dan Saltus dropped into the low driver’s seat—with its comfortable cushions, which gave just room for the mechanician to sit by the side of the driver—and skillfully guided the car upon a flat platform elevator a few yards away.

The smoothness with which the powerful machine rolled along the concrete floor, so slowly that it appeared hardly to be moving, proved that it was a perfect bit of mechanism. One could hardly realize that its gaunt, rakish frame held the potency of a hundred miles an hour and more. It just crawled now—no more.

Victor Burnham waited patiently until Dan Saltus had taken the car to an upper floor, where it would be locked up in an iron fireproof room by itself. When the foreman came down again, Burnham remarked that the trial of the Thunderbolt was to take place at the speedway at ten the next morning.

“I know it,” replied Dan.

“You’ll be there?”

“I guess so. The boss here doesn’t like me to be away too much, for we are pretty busy. But I can trust my assistant for that length of time. We have some good men working for us, too. That’s one comfort. But you don’t want me to do any work on the Thunderbolt to-morrow, do you?” he added, with the ghost of a grin.

“No,” growled Burnham. “So long as you are on the job when the race comes off, I don’t ask anything more. But I want you to see this Thunderbolt in real action at the trial. It may give you some ideas as to how you are to fix it afterward. Good night, Dan.”

He walked out of the garage without looking back. Outside, he lighted a cigar, which he puffed contentedly as he went along.

“The coldest proposition I ever went up against,” reflected Dan Saltus, aloud, looking after the departing Burnham. “By gravy, I believe he’d rather have that young fellow Downs killed than not. If Burnham knew I was on to his game to the very bottom, he’d be surprised, I reckon. He thinks I think all he cares about is to win this race just for the sake of the glory and my thousand dollars. Strange how things come about. If it hadn’t been that Hank Swartz is a friend of mine, I’d never have got on to it all. As it is, I reckon that——Hello, Hank! Where did you blow in from?”

A wide-shouldered, lean-faced man, with the deep tan on his face that told of outdoor life in the open country—for he could not have got so brown anywhere else—strolled into the garage and coolly appropriated the one wooden chair in sight, which was usually occupied by the foreman when he had nothing else to do.

---

CHAPTER VI.
The Heart of the Plot.

“I HAVE been attending to affairs for Burnham,” replied Hank Swartz, when he was comfortably settled in his chair. “I wish I could smoke in here.”

“Well, you can’t,” snapped Dan. “You know that as well as I do. This is a garage.”

“All right. I just dropped in to see how the Columbiad looked? Where is she?”

“She’s put away upstairs, in her own little flat,” answered Dan, with his usual surly grin. “We are not showing her to everybody until the day of the race. Then some of them may see her a little too much. She’s going to win that cup and the purse, Hank.”

“Of course she is. She must. There’ll be a neat little sum in side bets, too. Gee! I reckon Vic Burnham will clean up about fifty thousand. Well, he needs it.”

This time Dan Saltus allowed himself to chuckle outright.

“He sure does. He’s so near broke that if he was to get a hard shove he would tumble clear over into bankruptcy. But he’s a great bluffer. If he can get that girl of Ranfelt’s he’ll be all right. But the other string he has out, on old man Burwin, of Burwin & Son’s bank, is a good one, too.”

“And yet that deal depends rather on this race for the Lawrence cup, just as his winning Helen Ranfelt does,” remarked Hank Swartz wisely.

“How? I don’t quite get that,” responded Dan Saltus.

“Well, you know that Burnham wants to get old Dick Burwin to open a branch bank out in Carson City, and appoint Burnham the president?”

“Sure! I’m wise to that.”

“Well, Burnham has been bluffing the old man that he can put a hundred thousand plunks into the capital of the new bank. That would give an excuse for making him president. Old Burwin likes the scheme, according to Burnham. But Burnham has always been afraid that when it was sprung on Burwin’s nephew, this Stanley Downs, the beans would all be spilled.”

“I reckon that’s so,” agreed Dan thoughtfully. “This Downs is one smart guy. They say his uncle relies on his judgment in ‘most everything he does.”

“That’s what,” was Swartz’s response. “So it’s up to Burnham to keep it away from Stanley Downs—which he has done up to date—or to queer Downs so badly with his uncle that anything he says won’t count. Pretty slick plan, eh, Dan?”

The two men chuckled in concert. Obviously they were both in a plot that appealed to their peculiar temperament, and which it gave them pleasure to discuss at their leisure.

“I hear Stanley Downs has lost twenty thousand dollars belonging to the bank,” remarked Dan, after a short pause.

“Oh, you heard that, eh? Where did you get it?”

“Oh, come off, Hank! What am I on earth for? To walk around with plugs in my ears and blinders on? I can tell you something more about that. Downs is keeping it from his uncle that he’s shy the twenty thousand, and he hopes to get it from this cup race. Isn’t that right?”

“You are not far off, Dan,” admitted Swartz.

“You bet I’m not. Well, he isn’t going to get that twenty thousand, because Burnham, with his Columbiad upstairs, will rush over the finish line while Stanley Downs and his Thunderbolt will be a hundred miles behind, wondering why he ever entered.”

“You’ll get some of the purse, eh, Dan?”

“I’ll be the mechanician. Of course I’ll get some. You don’t think I’m going to take chances of being all broken up for nothing.”

“But won’t you get more than your mechanician’s percentage?” persisted Swartz.

Dan Saltus had been leaning against the doorpost, where he could look up and down the street while conversing with Swartz. He swung around abruptly at the last remark, and there was an expression of anger as well as fear in his eyes.

“What do you mean by that, Hank? Who said I’d get more than my regular bit as a mechanician? Why should I?”

“I don’t know. I only asked,” replied Hank Swartz coolly. “I’m getting paid by Burnham for certain work I’m doing for him. I wouldn’t tell everybody, but I’m not trying to hide it from you. I thought you might loosen up a little to me—that’s all. We’re old pards. We’ve rode, worked, and bunked together out in the West, both in the cattle country and the mines. But if you want to forget all that, why, it goes with me, too.”

There was so much sadness in the way this was said that Dan Saltus felt obliged to respond. He held out his hand to the other.

“I didn’t mean nothing, Hank,” he protested. “Only it ain’t well to talk too much. I’ll only tell you this much, and you can guess the rest if you have a mind to: Victor Burnham is going to win this race with the Columbiad.”

“I see,” replied Swartz. “I’m glad to hear it. That will make things all O. K. for me at my end of it.”

“How?”

“If Burnham wins the race, it will put Stanley Downs in the wrong with his uncle. He’ll be twenty thousand dollars shy, for one thing, and he’ll fall down in a game that he’s supposed to know all the way through from soup to nuts.”

“Then there’s Ranfelt’s girl!” suggested Dan.

“Yes. Not that Stanley Downs wants her. He never met her till yesterday, when he played into our hands by diving into the lake with her and her Fanchon,” laughed Hank. “But Vic Burnham is crazy for her.”

“What are you handing me, Hank?” demanded Saltus, with an incredulous chuckle. “I never knew Vic Burnham to be crazy over any girl. He wants her dad’s money. That’s all.”

“Well, isn’t it all the same?” rejoined Swartz. “He wants her, and he’ll stand a fair show of getting her if he pulls off this race. I’m mighty glad you and he have it framed up to get it for him.”

“There you go again, Hank!” complained Dan Saltus. “Who has anything ‘framed up’? It’s going to be a straight contest, with the best car and driver winning. You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. You needn’t fly off the handle just because we are having a little friendly talk. I’m going around to look at the Thunderbolt, if I can. It’s in the Moussard garage. They are not letting strangers look her over, of course. But I know the boys there, and I reckon I can get in to see what she looks like at close range.”

Hank Swartz strolled out, after a friendly “So long!” to Dan, and walked across that part of the city for about a quarter of a mile before he stopped in front of another garage, which was enough like the one where he had left Dan Saltus to be mistaken for it, if it had been next door.

It was in an upstairs warehouse that Swartz found several persons standing around the racer that Stanley Downs was to drive in the trial for two miles on the morrow.

One of the garage men took Swartz up and directed him to stand out of sight behind a big limousine until the party looking at the Thunderbolt went away.

“Then you can give her the once over without one knowing anything about it,” said the man to Swartz. “The boss gave orders that nobody was to see it except Mr. Downs and his friends—and Mr. Ranfelt, of course. They are over there now, but they won’t stay long.”

“All right, Bill,” returned Swartz, as the two sat on the running board of the limousine.

“You will easily qualify at the trial to-morrow, Mr. Downs,” remarked Helen Ranfelt, as Stanley Downs pointed out to her the various items that made up the big Thunderbolt. “I know something about automobiles, and I can see that you have about everything in this car that you could want in a racer. How I should like to drive her over the track myself, just once,” she added wistfully.

“It wouldn’t be as comfortable as your Fanchon, Helen,” put in her father. “Besides, it isn’t customary for young ladies to drive in races.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to drive in the race,” pouted Helen. “Although I wouldn’t mind doing that if it were considered the proper thing. What I suggested was that it would be nice to send the Thunderbolt over that beautiful, smooth wooden floor of the speedway, just to feel her going at ninety miles an hour.”

“Ninety miles an hour, Helen?” said Clay Varron, with a laugh. “You have your nerve with you. Do you realize that that means a mile and a half a minute?”

“I know the multiplication table, Clay,” she rejoined. “If it is the multiplication table you compute it by. Anyhow, I have driven sixty miles on a road, and I don’t think speed would ever scare me very badly.”

“That’s so,” agreed Lawrence K. Ranfelt boisterously. “By George, Clay, I’d rather trust Helen in a race than a lot of men I know. I’d like to see her in a car against Victor Burnham. I bet she’d make Vic hustle.”

Helen Ranfelt frowned and pinched her father’s arm.

“Was it necessary to bring Mr. Burnham’s name into this?” she asked, in a whisper. “I want to forget him.”

“If you do, you’d better root for Mr. Downs to pull off the race. You know what Burnham expects if he brings the Columbiad in first.”

“What he expects and what he will get may be widely apart, dad,” returned the girl, in her usual tone, and with a carcass laugh and toss of her head. “Anyhow, I’m expecting to see the Thunderbolt do it easily.”

“We shall get a line on it at the trial to-morrow,” observed Varron. “I suppose you haven’t any doubt about it yourself—have you, Stan?”

Stanley Downs smiled, as he patted the gray monster, with its immense white “5” on the front of the radiator, and repeated in three other places, on each side of the hood and at the back.

“I’m ready to guarantee that the Thunderbolt is in perfect condition to-night,” he said. “That means it will be the same in the morning, for it will be shut up here by the garage men after we’ve gone, and no one else will see it till I come down here to drive it to the speedway.”

“You’ll drive it through the city yourself, then?” asked Varron.

“Certainly. It is the safest thing to do.”

“How do you feel yourself?” asked Mr. Ranfelt, slapping him on the shoulder. “Think you are fit?”

“Seem to be,” replied Stanley, as the party filed out of the room and went down the stairs on their way to the street.

“Now, Hank,” said the man he had called Bill. “If you want to take a flash at the Thunderbolt, now is your time.”

Hank Swartz walked over to the racer, over which a bunch of electric lights still glowed, and bent down to look at her closely.

This man had owned several cars in his life, and he knew the “points” of an automobile. So his examination of the Thunderbolt was an intelligent one, even though he was not long making it.

“Well?” queried Bill, as Swartz at last moved away from the Thunderbolt. “What do you think of her?”

Hank Swartz drew a long breath. Then he shook his head slowly.

“She is unbeatable—as she stands to-night,” he answered.

He went out of the garage, boarded a street car at a near corner, and sent his name up to a certain room in a prominent hotel.

“Mr. Burnham is out,” announced the clerk, when the telephone had failed to draw a response from the room.

Swartz frowned impatiently. Then he hastily wrote his name on a card and handed it to the clerk. On the card he had also written: “Call me up right away. Important. Trouble.”

“See that Mr. Burnham gets this card as soon as he returns, please,” he requested, as he turned away from the desk.

He strode up and down the spacious lobby several times, thinking, and muttering to himself. What he said was: “The Thunderbolt is unbeatable. I said it and I sincerely meant it. Unbeatable—unless——Well, that will be up to Burnham.”

He walked out of the hotel, still thinking and muttering.

---

CHAPTER VII.
A Reply by Wire.

THE trial of the Thunderbolt was an entire success. As Stanley Downs had said, the car was tuned to perfection, while he, the driver, was as good as his machine. The two worked together like one organism.

There were several hundred people at the speedway to see the trial, although it was not a public exhibition. The spectators included drivers of other cars, mechanicians, officers of the speedway—including the manager, Colonel Frank Prentiss—and other persons who were connected in various ways with the track and the race that was to take place on Thursday.

Stanley did not push his car too hard, but he went over the two miles in a minute and twenty seconds, which was at the rate of ninety miles an hour. This admitted the car to the cup race, the requirement being a speed of not less than eighty-five miles an hour.

When the trial was over, and as soon as he could get away from the swarm of interested people who crowded about the car after it had passed the judges’ stand and been declared qualified, Stanley left the track and made his way to the garage, where he turned the Thunderbolt over to his mechanician.

He had had a telegram from his uncle that morning which he should have answered before—only that he did not know what to say. It disturbed him so that it was only by desperately concentrating his mind on the business immediately in hand that he had been enabled to drive in the trial.

The telegram was brief and to the point. It read as follows:

Have heard that you met with accident in mountains not far from Poughkeepsie. Is money safe? Answer at once.

Richard Burwin.

“What shall I do about this, Clay?” asked Stanley of his friend, as the two pored over the telegram in Stanley’s room at the hotel. “The money is at the bottom of the lake. I suppose it is safe enough, but I haven’t got it,” he added grimly.

“I suppose you must answer the wire?” observed Varron, with, a questioning look.

“If you knew my uncle as well as I do,” returned Stanley, “you would not ask that. Of course I must answer it.”

“Well, then, I’d give him the answer you just now gave me.”

Stanley looked at him, puzzled, for a moment. Then he uttered a short laugh and shook his head.

“You mean that I shall telegraph him the money is safe?”

“Just that,” replied Clay Varron. “You said yourself it was safe. That is what he asks.”

“That would be a prevarication. I don’t see how I can say that. He wouldn’t consider it safe if I told him where it was. No, Clay, I can’t do it. My uncle is always square with me. I should feel like a crook if I sent him such a message as that.”

“Well, what will you do? If you tell him the truth, what will be the consequence?”

“The consequence will be that he will think I am a fool,” answered Stanley Downs, without hesitation.

“He couldn’t think that, unless he’s a fool himself,” was Clay’s warm rejoinder. “Come again.”

“Well, he would know that I had failed in a matter where I should have used extreme care, and I doubt whether he ever would trust me again. I have fallen down, and there is no getting away from it.”

Stanley Downs strode up and down the room in such a dejected frame of mind that his friend became indignant.

“What’s the matter with you, Stan? Buck up! You took a risk of your life to save a girl, and you did what any man ought to do. The fact that some of them would have held back is nothing to do with the case. When you knew that that crazy kid cousin of mine was driving straight to a horrible death, you followed her up and brought her through. If you call that ‘falling down,’ or behaving like a fool, then I can only say I wish there were more fools like you in the world.”

Stanley Downs placed his two hands affectionately on the shoulders of his loyal friend and looked him in the eyes, as he asked earnestly:

“Clay, now, on the level, would you ask me to tell a deliberate lie to my uncle, who has always been straight with me—who has been indeed more than a father—and who would fight any man who dared even to hint that I would juggle with the truth? Would you?”

Clay Varron coughed in embarrassment. Then he answered, in as earnest a voice as Stanley’s own:

“Of course you can’t do it, Stan. But I don’t know what to advise you to telegraph him. I don’t, by gosh!”

“There is only one way out of it that I can see,” declared Stanley, after a few minutes’ cogitation. “That is, to evade his question for the present. I am in hopes that after Thursday I shall be able to go to New York with the money.”

“You will, old man,” was Clay’s eager response. “You’ll win that race and have twenty thousand dollars, to replace what you have lost. I am sure of that. I believed it before I saw the trial to-day. Now I know there is nothing can beat the Thunderbolt, with you at the wheel. This Columbiad may be a good car. I believe it is. But, the cars being equal—and I have no idea that the Columbiad is better than the Thunderbolt, you are a better driver than Burnham. That will give you just the ‘edge’ you require to come in first. Your judgment in driving will beat Burnham, as sure as that the sun will rise to-morrow morning.”

There was no resisting the enthusiasm of Clay Varron. A smile broke over Stanley’s troubled countenance, and it was with a feeling of confidence that he took up a pad of telegraph blanks from a table to write a message to Richard Burwin.

He was some little time composing the telegram. At last, however, he had written what he thought would be the best thing, and he read it to Clay, in the following words:

Am detained in Buffalo until after the automobile race on Thursday. Have business with Colonel Prentiss. Will come to New York on Friday. All well.

Stanley Downs.

“That ‘All well’ is a good touch,” approved Clay Varron. “It is the truth, too. When you have driven this race, everything will be well, and you will go down to New York with your twenty thousand dollars. Then you can tell your uncle about it, if you like.”

“I certainly shall tell him. I am in hopes that, if there is no loss, he will forgive me——”

“For taking a chance on being drowned to save a girl, eh?” interrupted Clay. “Well, if he doesn’t forgive you he will have a hard time explaining to his conscience. Going to take that telegram downstairs and have it sent, or will you telephone for a boy to be sent here?” asked Clay.

“I think I’ll walk around with it to the office. Then I shall know it gets off right away,” decided Stanley. “Will you dine with me to-night?”

“Can’t, dear boy,” answered Clay. “I’ve promised to take dinner with the Ranfelts, at their hotel. Then we are going to a theater. By the way, you were invited, too—weren’t you?”

“Yes. But I begged off. I knew this telegram was here, and, to tell the truth, I didn’t feel like talking and seeing a show. There are only two more clear days before the race, and I think I shall use them in resting, except when I am exercising the Thunderbolt on the speedway. I want to get used to that track.”

“There is not much to be learned about it. I should think,” said Vernon. “It is almost a counterpart of the speedway at Sheepshead. Two-mile oval, with two half-mile straightaways and two half-mile turns.”

“Yes, I know all that,” interrupted Stanley. “And at the curves the outside edges rise to twenty-five feet. The track is seventy feet wide. You see, I have all its dimensions. I even know that it is built of two-by-four pine, laid on edge. But all that means little to a man in a big race, unless he has practiced again and again. No matter how smooth a track may seem to be, there are sure to be little kinks that a driver should know.”

“In what way are there kinks?”

“Little waves where the going rises slightly—almost imperceptibly—and yet which will make a fast-running car swerve. You know that, Clay. You are an automobilist.”

Clay Varron nodded. He did, indeed, understand how slight an obstruction will change the course of a motor car when going at high speed. There could be no argument as to the wisdom of a driver trying out the track as often as possible.

“Of course. Stan, it would be foolish in you to neglect all possible precautions. So I suppose it was wise for you to pass up this dinner-and-show game to-night. There’ll be supper after the theater, of course, and I dare say it will be two o’clock in the morning, if not later, before the fair-haired boy who is talking to you will sink upon his downy pillow.”

“Drivers in three-hundred-and-fifty-mile cup races should not stay up till two in the morning,” said Stanley, with a laugh. “So I have plenty of excuse for not being with you to-night.”

“Another thing, Stan, that might have decided you to remain away is that Victor Burnham will be in the party. I don’t believe you like him any more than I do. Besides, he will be your principal opponent in the race, I think, and you wouldn’t want to talk about it, I know.”

“But he would, I guess?”

“Sure! He’s just the kind of bounder who would try to get your goat by talking about the difficulties of the thing, and wondering whether your car will stand the racket.”

“That would be very unsportsmanlike,” remarked Stanley, with a shrug.

“Of course. That’s why Burnham would do it. He’s a scalawag through and through, Stan. I know that. I’ve met him before. And, I tell you, old man, when you are in the race, you want to look out for him. If there is anything he can do to foul you, that’s what he’ll do.”

Stanley Downs laughed disdainfully.

“There isn’t much chance of a driver fouling another in an automobile race without his risking his own neck, as well as the other fellow’s, Clay. I can take care of myself when once we are going.”

“I reckon so,” agreed Clay Varron. “Well, I’ll walk with you as far as the telegraph office. We’ll take those back streets. They are a short cut. You know the way, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. Come on!”

The two young men walked briskly from the hotel, and in ten minutes Stanley was handing in his telegram, telling the clerk to send an answer, if there should be one, to the hotel.

Clay Varron had left his friend at the door of the telegraph office, and was on his way to his room, to dress for the dinner to which he had been invited.

When the message had been filed and paid for, Stanley came out alone and strolled along busy Main Street for several blocks, thinking of the strange curve of the ball of fate that had brought him to Buffalo again, to become a driver in this great race.

“If I weren’t so worried about that money, I should enjoy the experience, just for itself,” he murmured. “As it is, I am so anxious to win that it may be the cause of my defeat. Defeat? No, sir! I must win!”

He was so taken up with his thoughts that he never noticed two rather under-sized youths, with the furtive air and in the flashily cut cheap clothing peculiar to the underworld class, known as “gangsters” in most large American cities, who kept always at the same short distance behind him, and who never let him out of their sight.

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CHAPTER VIII.
Desperate Treachery.

IT was when Stanley had turned off the main thoroughfare, with its electric lights and thronging promenaders, into a labyrinth of dark and small streets, that he realized he had lost his way.

He could have turned around and come back to the broad, well-lighted avenue he had just left, but that was not Stanley Downs’ way, for he rather enjoyed wandering about cities without any clear notion of where he was going, only to find himself at last on some familiar thoroughfare.

“I have nothing particular to do this evening,” he told himself. “I don’t think I want any regular dinner, and I shall go to bed after a while. So I will just keep going till I come out somewhere I know.”

He strolled through the dark streets for another ten minutes, without coming to any landmark he recognized. Always behind him crept the shadows of the two gangsters, and both held in their hands short clubs of some kind.

“Ah! I see bright lights at the end of this street at last!” muttered Stanley. “I knew I’d work out of this muddle, sooner or later. Glad of it, for this darkness and the rough sidewalks are getting monotonous.”

He had stood at the mouth of a dark and forbidding alleyway as he gazed at the reflection of the lights some three blocks ahead.

He laughed at himself for being lost in a city that he knew fairly well, and had started to walk on, when a soft shuffling sound behind made him swing around, with an instinctive feeling that he must protect himself from some sudden danger.

It was this instinct that caused him to raise both arms in an attitude of defense. Also it prevented his being struck on the head.

A blackjack came down rather hard on his left arm, while another weapon of the same kind which menaced him on the right called for immediate action.

Stanley Downs was used to fighting in all sorts of ways. Not only was he a finished scientific boxer, but he had had experience in the brutal pastime of “rough and tumble” many times.

Down went the gangster who was about to bring the loaded club on him on his right. Stanley hit clean and true. His fist caught the fellow under the chin and sent him flying backward until he tumbled against a wall, where he stood, gasping.

The other rascal, having seen that his “handy billy” had not injured the arm it had struck, gathered himself together and disappeared in the darkness with the celerity that told of his familiarity with the locality, as well as proving that he was a lively sprinter.

Stanley turned to look at the half-disabled ruffian who was leaning against the wall. But hardly had he got his eyes focused on the limp figure, when the gangster, by a powerful effort of will, slunk out of view also.

Where he went was not apparent. There were many holes and corners in that shady neighborhood, including doorways to houses which were like rat burrows to those who knew them.

“Let him go!” muttered Stanley, smiling. “He hasn’t done me any harm, and I could not bother to have him arrested, even if there were a policeman in sight. I suppose they were just common holdups. If one of them had landed on my head with a blackjack or sandbag, they might have got me, too. As it was, they don’t win. I’ll get to the lighted streets, however. I couldn’t afford to be knocked out a day or so before that big race. After that, it wouldn’t so much matter.”

He laughed aloud at the incident which had ended in what he regarded as rather a ludicrous manner, and went calmly back to his hotel, and soon afterward to bed.

About the time that Stanley Downs was undressing and thinking over the big contest in which he was to take part on the day after the morrow, Victor Burnham sat in the back room of a low saloon in a tough part of the city, talking to the two gangsters who had vainly endeavored to knock Stanley senseless.

“He spoiled it, did he?” grunted Burnham. “That shows that you fellows are not much good. I ought not to pay you. What you’ve done for me is just nothing.”

“We couldn’t help it,” snarled one of the ruffians. “We shadowed him for nearly an hour before we got a chance. Then somebody must have given him a tip, for he turned just as I landed on him with the billy. I got him on the arm, instead of the head. He didn’t pay no attention to me, but he cut loose a left hook that took Patsy in the jaw and laid him out stiff. I beat it, of course. There wasn’t nothing else to do. Later I met Patsy here, and here he is. He’ll tell you whether I’m lying or not.”

“I don’t suppose you’re lying,” interrupted Burnham disgustedly. “I only say you are no good. But here is your fifty dollars. If you can get him again before the race, I’ll make it a hundred more—a hundred apiece. If he doesn’t show up in the race, I’ll know that you’ve done it, and you’ll get your money right away.”

He hurried out of the saloon. Patsy and the other worthy ordered more beer and divided the money Burnham had paid.

“What do you say, Patsy?” asked his pal. “Want to go after that duck again for a hundred?”

“Not on your life!” returned Patsy fervently. “I wouldn’t tackle him for five hundred.”

And Patsy meant it.

It was in the forenoon of the next day that Stanley Downs again tried out the car he was to use in the race. By his side was the taciturn, efficient young man who had been offered to him by the Moussard Company as his mechanician.

The mechanician often is as important a personage in a racing car as the driver. At any moment during the race the machine may develop some weakness, and it is the mechanician who immediately jumps in to get things going again. At a time when every second counts, the ability of the mechanician to work swiftly very often wins the struggle.

Stanley was entirely satisfied with the performance of the Thunderbolt, and was smiling as he got out of his seat in the garage, after the trial on the track.

“Paul,” he said to the mechanician. “You might as well look things over again. And perhaps it would be well if you got around very early in the morning to make sure that everything is right. The other men here are all safe, of course, or the Moussard people wouldn’t have them. But I believe in seeing for myself that my machine is right before it starts.”

“I’ll do it, sir,” replied Paul briefly. “I’ll have the car in good shape. But I would advise that you look her over yourself afterward.”

“I shall do that, of course, Paul,” returned Stanley. “I’m going to the hotel to rest most of the day. If you want me, you can call me up there.”

It was not more than two hours later, when there came a banging at Stanley’s door, accompanied by the voice of Clay Varron calling to him to open.

“What’s the matter. Clay? Anything happened? My uncle? Anything from him?”

“No. I haven’t heard from him. How should I? He wouldn’t write or telegraph me, would he? No. It’s something else. Paul Wallman, your mechanician, is in the hospital.”

“What?” cried Stanley, realizing with a rush what this might mean to him in the race. “Hurt? Sick?”

“Badly smashed by a car. It happened in the garage. He was bending down by the side of your Thunderbolt. Another man, handling cars up there, didn’t see him, and shoved a big car against him, crushing him against an iron post. He dropped in a heap, and they hurried him off to the hospital. His right arm is broken, and they were afraid of internal injuries, but I hear there is nothing of that kind. His broken arm puts him out of the race with you, however.”

“What am I to do?” exclaimed Stanley Downs, knitting his brows. “This is a serious matter. It may mean that I shall be hopelessly beaten. Poor Paul! I’m sorry for him, too. What shall I do? I’ll have to get another mechanician. But good ones are scarce. I can’t afford to risk the race with one I don’t know. At the same time——”

“Look here, Stan!” broke in Varron. “I didn’t come here to bring bad news without having something to suggest.”

“What is it, Clay?” questioned Stanley, as he clapped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I suppose you have found a good man for me—as good a one as Paul Wallman?”

“I don’t know about that,” was the modest response. “The man I have for you is myself!”

“Yourself?”

“Yes. I know the Thunderbolt car pretty well. I’ve driven one for a considerable time at intervals, and I don’t think there are any Thunderbolt tricks that can fool me. Aside from that, you know that if there is anything the mechanician can do to take you over the finish line first, your humble servant will do it. Is it a go?”

The hearty handshake and the expression of gratitude in Stanley Downs’ face was answer enough.

“All right, then,” went on Varron hurriedly. “Let’s get down to the garage and look the machine over. Then we might as well take a spin around the track together. What do you say?”

They hurried to the garage, and soon had the big racer on the street, ready to start for the speedway, out in the country. Among those who watched Stanley Downs drive away, with his new mechanician, was Hank Swartz. He was frowning heavily.

“I don’t know how it is,” muttered Hank to himself, “but that Downs always seems to fall on his feet. What was the use of paying to have Paul knocked out, when he can get as good a man as Clay Varron to fill his place. I know Varron. I’d rather have him in that Thunderbolt than Paul Wallman, any time. Burnham will get the worst of this yet, if he doesn’t watch out.”

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CHAPTER IX.
A Broken Record.

IT was a splendid day for the big race. There was not too much sun, for a soft mist hung in the air, tempering the light. But it was bright and comfortably warm, nevertheless. In a word, it was perfect spring weather.

The grand stand, bleachers, and every other part of the immense grounds where admission was charged were crowded with sight-seers. In the vast acreage around the track set apart for automobiles, the machines were parked several deep, and in all of them were groups of well-dressed men and beautifully dressed women, who had come from all parts of the country to see what could be done by motor cars that were the last word in scientific achievement.

There was a record already of more than a hundred and two miles an hour by an American car. Would this be beaten to-day? That was the question. Or would it ever be equaled?

“That Columbiad may do it,” observed Colonel Frank Prentiss to a few of his intimates, as he stood in the judges’ stand and looked over the vast crowd that had gathered in the hope of seeing a smashed record. “There is a possibility, that the Thunderbolt may touch it, too.”

“I’d like to see the Thunderbolt win,” remarked an elderly man, with the indescribable air of wealth about him that can seldom be mistaken. “It is an American car. The Columbiad is of foreign make, I believe?”

“Yes,” replied Lawrence K. Ranfelt, who had brought this gentleman into the stand as a special favor. “It is driven by an American, however. Victor Burnham. Ever heard of him?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of him,” replied the other dryly. “I guess I’ll get down to my car. I can see the race from there comfortably. Come with me. Ranfelt?”

“Yes. I believe I will,” replied Lawrence K., as he went down the spiral staircase with the elderly gentleman. “My girl Helen is with a party of friends in another car.”

The preliminaries of the big race were carried out rapidly and in businesslike fashion.

The drivers and mechanicians had looked their machines over for the last time, had given them little dashes over the track to make sure that everything worked easily, and now were lining up across the wide speedway to have their photographs taken en masse.

It was difficult to tell one from the other at a little distance. They all looked like machinists in very soiled clothing, while the tight caps, goggles in front, and the coat collars pulled up high, helped to hide the fact that many of the contestants were extremely personable young men, who, in their street clothing, were rather finicky about their appearance.

Stanley Downs and Clay Varron stood side by side, and close by were Victor Burnham, with his mechanician, Dan Saltus. Stanley and Burnham did not look at each other, but Dan Saltus glanced rather curiously at Clay Varron. Saltus had heard of Paul Wallman’s injury, and he rather wondered what kind of mechanician Stanley would have with him in the Thunderbolt.

“Get into your cars, gentlemen!” ordered the starter, as he waved to the loud brass band to stop playing. “Ready!”

He gave a few directions to the drivers, as the eighteen cars in the race were brought to a stop inside the line. He told them they were to go once around the track, with a big car which stood a few yards in front of them as a pacer. They were not to pass the pacer. When they came around they could take a flying start for the real race as he dropped his flag.

Away went the cars! Even the preliminary rush around the bowl was at nearly a hundred miles an hour. As they came around again, the starter shouted “Go!”—which could not be heard—and dropped his red flag.

The race was on!

A great roar arose from the fifty or sixty thousand people about the track as the cars tore around the oval. Every car was at its best just then, and the first lap of two miles was made at the rate of ninety-five miles an hour, even by the last one.

The next two miles were covered at more than a hundred, and the drivers warmed up, going higher and higher as each circuit of the great wooden bowl was completed.

The cars were scattered by this time. The whole track was dotted with them.

The Thunderbolt and Columbiad were in the ruck, neither conspicuously in the forefront, nor far behind. Both Stanley Downs and Victor Burnham were holding their cars in, contented to be safe for the present, without trying for a lead.

Time would come when some of the contestants would drop out. There were three hundred and fifty miles to go, altogether. Plenty of time for the vicious struggle that must come when victory lay just among a few of the survivors.

Stanley Downs, his goggles firmly adjusted and his eyes gazing straight ahead, knew he had his car well under control. He could feel it leaping forward in response to every light touch on the throttle, while it obeyed the least turn of the wheel over which he could just see the yellow-brown pine flooring ahead.

“She’s going all right, Stan?” shouted Varron in his ear.

“Perfectly!”

“I haven’t heard a sound from her that shouldn’t be there.”

“Nor I.”

“All right, Stan! Keep steady! You’ll make it!” reassured Clay Varron. “Hello! That was Burnham!” he added, as a car swept close to them, so that it seemed as if there had been a deliberate attempt at collision. “The man must be crazy!”

Burnham had driven his long, snaky Columbiad so close that Stanley had been obliged to swerve, giving his rival a hundred yards advantage, at least, before the Thunderbolt could recover.

It was a reckless thing to do. If Stanley Downs had not been a splendid driver, he might not have got out of the way in time. But Burnham had figured on that. He knew Stanley was on the alert, and it was worth a little risk to get that much ahead, he thought.

“You’ve got to make up that gap, Stan!” shouted Varron.

Stanley Downs did not trouble to answer. But he let in a little more gas, and his machine jumped forward in response.

“Ah!” chuckled Varron. “That’ll do it. I don’t believe——What’s that?”

A soft crack had reached his ears. It was underneath the car!

Without a moment’s hesitation, Varron leaned far over the side of the car, and seizing an iron handhold, he peered underneath.

As he pulled himself to his seat again, he shouted to Stanley Downs:

“Get down off the track. We’ll have to lose a minute or two! Not more! Hurry!”

Stanley did not ask what was the matter until he had steered his car to the inside of the track, in front of the judges’ stand. He had not quite stopped when Varron was on the ground, a pair of pliers in his hand.

Under the car he dived as it came to a standstill, and there was a minute’s work with the pliers. Then he came out, leaped into his seat, and shouted to Stanley: “Go—like the deuce!”

Up shot the Thunderbolt to the track again, and it was going as fast as any of them, almost at once. It was not till the speedometer told that once more they were doing a hundred miles an hour that Varron volunteered any information as to what had been wrong.

“Connecting rod loosened,” he explained. “It had been done purposely, for there was a nut wedged where it would prevent the thing being found out at first. I never saw anything more infernally cunning. Somebody got at the car while we were having our pictures taken. That’s the only time it could have been done, for I’d looked her over just before that. The connecting rod was all right then.”

“We’ll talk about that after the race,” said Stanley shortly.

The delay had given Burnham a start on the Thunderbolt of a whole lap—two miles.

Stanley could not lessen the distance, try as he would. He decided, after a dozen circuits of the oval, that he would not try any more just then. He would content himself with not getting any farther behind.

So far it appeared as if the Thunderbolt and Columbiad were just about equal in power and speed. It would be nip and tuck, even if they were level.

The race kept on, and car after car dropped out, unable to stand the grueling pace. When there were a hundred and fifty miles to go only nine cars remained—just half the number that had started.

“We’ve gained one lap on Burnham,” shouted Varron to Stanley. “The other cars are not in it for first place. Keep it up. We did a hundred and three miles an hour for the last lap. That beat Burnham. Go ahead! Go on!”

Varron was wild now. He saw that the Thunderbolt was slowly creeping up on its rival. A little more and they would lap him again.

“It must be done! The Thunderbolt must win!”

He bellowed this through the roar of the car, and though the rushing wind drove the words back into his throat, he still kept up his frantic cries of encouragement to the cool, steady driver at his side.

Stanley Downs had been in many a contest before, on the football field, at polo, and other sports. But never had he taken part in a battle as exciting as this, and never had he been cooler.

He felt that the machine was working smoothly, that every part seemed to be in perfect accord, and that he was slowly gaining on the rival who had resolved to beat him at any cost.

Clay Varron had used his oil can at frequent intervals. Being a racing car, the Thunderbolt could be replenished with oil from the seat in all of its more important parts, and Clay had taken care there should be no lack of lubricant.

Twenty, forty, a hundred miles had been covered, and Stanley Downs lifted his machine almost even with the Columbiad. Another effort and he would pass.

It was at this instant that Stanley caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of the driver of the Columbiad, as the latter turned his head slightly in the direction of his rival. Also, he saw that the mechanician, Dan Saltus, was shouting something to Burnham, as he raised his hand, apparently in remonstrance.

It was all so quick that afterward Stanley Downs did not know exactly what he had seen in the Columbiad.

Just as Saltus shouted, there was a quick swerve of the Columbiad, and it crowded toward the Thunderbolt.

It was the same trick that Burnham had played early in the race, and which then might have resulted in the horrible death of the four men in the two cars.

Stanley gripped his wheel tighter and tried to steer out of the way, even although he knew it would lose for him two or three hundred precious yards.

But he did not go quite far enough! The Columbiad bore down on him, and the two raced along for a second or two, with only a few inches separating them.

Then came the crash. By one of those curious combinations of circumstances not uncommon in automobiling, it chanced that a rear corner of the Thunderbolt clipped the other car just where it would upset its gravity.

Bang! Smash!

The Columbiad was on its side, while Stanley, quickly recovering from the jar, whirled on alone.

There was no time for Stanley to look at the wreck. He kept on with the race. He must win, no matter who might be hurt. It is the cruel rule in races of all kinds. Only those not in the actual contest can give time to look after those who may have fallen in the struggle.

As they tore around on the next lap, keeping well clear of the wrecked car, Varron saw men lifting Burnham and his mechanician away, and the next time around the Columbiad had been turned over on its wheels by a score of men and pushed out of the way.

It did not take long to cover the remaining distance. As Stanley Downs rushed the Thunderbolt over the finish line, his number went up on the board: “Number 5 wins!” Directly afterward the time was recorded also: “103.10.”

This meant that the Thunderbolt had covered the three hundred and fifty miles at an average speed of more than one hundred and three miles an hour.

Stanley Downs had beaten the record!

It was some time before Stanley could get to a certain car parked in the infield, in whom he had seen an elderly gentleman, to whom he wanted very much to speak.

There were a number of formalities to be gone through. The man who had won the Lawrence Cup could not be allowed to go away till he had been addressed by the judges and had his photograph taken.

Then he had to go and change his clothes after a shower bath, and do various other things to bring him back to his usual appearance.

It was all done at last, however, and he dashed for the car that had been his aim all along since he had finished the race and had time to look about him.

“Uncle!” he cried, as the elderly gentleman took his hand in a warm, strong grip. “Somehow, I had a feeling that you’d come—especially when I got no reply to my telegram. I’m very glad to see you.”

Richard Burwin was an unemotional man, as a rule. But there were tears behind his glasses as he said brokenly:

“Stan, my boy, I knew all about it. I know more than you do. That fellow Burnham was pretty slick, but not quite slick enough for the old man. I had his measure from the first. However, he’s dead, so——”

“Dead?”

“Yes. He was smashed all to pieces. Crushed almost to a jelly. Dreadful thing, of course. But he got it when he tried to crowd you off the track—or kill you. I don’t believe he cared what he did. His mechanician will get well they say.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” said Stanley earnestly.

“So am I,” came from Richard Burwin. “I am told he confessed, when they carried him off the track, and when he thought he was dying, that he had stolen a package of twenty thousand dollars from you when you were at the track before you started for New York in your car.”

“Stole it?” cried Stanley, dazed.

“Yes. He changed it on you. Common trick among crooks, you know. The old green-goods game! So you had only a bundle of worthless paper, with a real bank note on the outside, in your car pocket. That’s what went to the bottom of the lake. The money is safe, the fellow says. We’ll get it back when we’ve seen him at the hospital, and got his formal confession. Now, let’s get away from here. We’re going to take luncheon with Ranfelt—an old friend of mine—Prentiss, and Miss Ranfelt——”

“Why, Mr. Downs, won’t you let me congratulate you?” broke in the sweet voice of Helen Ranfelt. “I have been trying to do it all the time you have been talking to Mr. Burwin.” Then, in a lower tone, that only Stanley could hear: “You know how much this means to me. I am horrified at Mr. Burnham’s death. But—wouldn’t it have been dreadful if he had won the race?”

“Hello, Helen! How do you think you’d like to be a mechanician?” asked Clay Varron, laughing, as he took his fair cousin’s hand. “It’s great sport, I assure you.”

“Clay, you’re splendid,” she answered. “If you hadn’t helped Mr. Downs to win the cup, I never would have forgiven you.”

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