CHAPTER III
THE MIRACLE AT GREENFIELD
Meanwhile, back in his private car, the great man, as was his custom in any circumstance, had made himself as comfortable as might be. It was a luxurious car, eighty feet in length, with bath, kitchen, lounging-room, bedrooms, dining-room—in fact, everything that a modern home could have, on a small and compact scale. Travel in this car was as luxurious as travel could be. And even at the wild rate of speed at which it was jerked forward, it maintained a long, steady roll, much like that of a ship on a calm sea. Only when one glanced out the windows at the blurred landscape was the speed apparent, unless, indeed, one kept one’s eyes on the needle, which flickered ceaselessly up and down on the speed-indicator.
Both of these things the great man studiously refrained from doing, but turning his back alike to the windows and to the indicator, he devoted his time to going through his correspondence, dictating to his secretary, and meditating ways and means for holding New York in the column of the “safe and sane.”
He sat up late into the night, as the train whirled across the Illinois prairies, smoking meditatively, a wrinkle of perplexed anxiety between his brows, for the path to the White House was proving more thorny than he had thought possible. Not the least of his unexpected tribulations was this record-breaking trip half across the continent. He was naturally a nervous man, and this hurtling through space distressed him acutely. He felt that he was being offered as a sacrifice upon the altar of his country, and the sensation was anything but pleasant. His only consolation was that his meteoric trip was being featured by the papers, both friendly and unfriendly, and would prove an excellent advertisement—more especially since the friendly papers were taking care to point out how lightly the great man considered his own comfort—nay, even his life—when his country called him! He smiled grimly to himself as he thought of those headlines, for he was thoroughly conscious that he was not in the least heroic, but merely an ordinary man with a faculty of making friends, a power of keeping his mouth shut when it was wise to do so, and a gift for rounded periods when rounded periods were demanded.
He went to bed, at last, long after midnight, and it was not until Cincinnati had been left far behind that he arose. He took his bath, dressed himself leisurely, and finally sat down to breakfast. Sitting thus, with his side to the window, he could not escape the vision of the landscape, which was rushing madly past. Involuntarily his eyes rested for an instant on the speed-indicator, and he started as he saw that the needle showed an hourly speed of seventy-two miles. He closed his lips firmly together and with a hand not altogether steady started to attack his grapefruit.
Then suddenly the car lurched heavily and the next instant it seemed to stand on end and buckle in the middle. The great man was thrown forward across the table, which overturned with a crash; a negro waiter, who was just entering with a tray of dishes, was hurled through a glass partition and disappeared with a yell of terror. Every movable thing in the car leaped toward the front end; what was breakable broke and the orderly interior was transformed in an instant to an appalling chaos.
Of what happened in the next minute or two, the great man never had any very definite recollection. He staggered to his feet at last and looked dazedly around. Had there been a wreck? Was he badly injured?
Then he realized that the car was moving, that the landscape was slipping past as rapidly as ever. His eyes fell again upon the needle of the indicator. It stood at sixty-eight. He glared at it for a moment, unable to believe his senses, then collapsed into a chair and buried his head in his hands.
And it was in that position that his secretary found him.