None of those who participated in that night ride ever forgot it. Shortly after starting from the hotel in Brookville it began to rain, and the storm increased in violence until at midnight it was blowing a gale, and the rain was coming down in torrents.
“Can we go on?” asked Dr. Wright, calmly, from within the well-enclosed tonneau.
“The machine can,” said Jerry, wondering what the doctor meant.
“And if the machine can, we can,” was the reassuring reply.
The powerful lights marked out the muddy and sloppy road that lay ahead of them. Fortunately Jerry had been over it twice and he was pretty familiar with it now. He drove on cautiously enough, but at a pace that brought from Miss Payson and Miss Wright exclamations of alarm now and then. As for Dr. Wright, he betrayed no fear whatever. He sat silent in one corner of the big car.
“Will we be in time? Will we be in time?” was the question that ran through Jerry’s mind continually.
That every moment counted he well knew from the look on the face of Dr. Wright as he read the note Dr. Brown had written. Professor Snodgrass was in imminent danger. That much was certain. Could he be operated on in time? Could he be given back the life that was so fast slipping away, long enough to make the disclosure he had hinted at in his delirium—a disclosure that would prove the fraud of those who had taken the land from Mrs. Hopkins? Jerry asked himself those questions.
On and on they lurched in the auto. Now they glided down some slippery hill, now they climbed the opposite slope, with all power on.
It was raining hard when a faint streak of light in the east showed that the dawn was trying to break. It was still raining when they headed for the shipyard.
“We had better stop and have some breakfast,” suggested Dr. Wright, and when Jerry looked a little dubious at the delay the surgeon said: “We shall all be better for it, and able to make better time. We must be in good shape for what lies before us. We must neglect nothing.”