"No more bracelets, my friend," she thought, and her car shot forward faster than ever.
She fancied that he must be having trouble getting his engine started, for she did not hear the motorcycle behind her. She knew that just before she entered the village about half a mile ahead of her there was an unfrequented little road that ran into the highroad she was on, almost parallel to it. If she could get on that she could let the car out for miles and miles. The only trouble was that she would have to turn almost completely round and, going at this pace, that wouldn't be easy.
Presently she caught the sound of the quick, regular explosion, and the anticipated speck appeared in her mirror. All her powers were concentrated now on keeping her car straight on the slippery road, but she thought grimly, "Worse for him on two wheels than for me on four." She felt a mounting determination not to be caught—a willingness to take any risk. Still the man on the motorcycle was gaining on her. At an inequality in the road her front wheels veered sharply. With a quick twist she recovered control and went straight again. She knew how to drive, thank goodness!
With the man gaining on her, she welcomed the sight of her back road coming in on the right. Even at the pace she could get round it, she thought, by skidding her car; and the motorcycle couldn't but would shoot ahead right into the village of Wide Plains, scattering children and dogs before him as he came. She felt a wild amusement at the thought, but her face did not relax its tense sternness.
She tightened her grip on the wheel, working the car to the left, preparing for the turn, and put on her brakes hard enough to lock the back wheels, expecting to feel the quick sideways slip of a skidding car. Instead there was a terrific impact—the crash of steel and glass, a cry. Her own car shot out of her control, turning a complete circle, bounded off the road and on again, and came slowly to a standstill, pointing in the same direction as before, but some yards beyond the fork in the road. She looked about her. Fragments of the motorcycle were strewn from the corner to where in a ditch at the foot of a telegraph pole the man was lying, a featureless mass.
