[CHAPTER XXII]
The Road to Home
The motor-cycle was behaving excellently. As Pete began to get the feel of his steed he experimented a bit with the throttle, twisting the hand grip that controlled it farther and farther, until the machine responded with a burst of speed that alarmed the lady in the bathtub. She clung to the edges of the car and shut her eyes against the wind, bracing her feet with the instinctive effort of trying to apply brakes.
Pete knew only in a general way the direction of the main road, which he was seeking. When they emerged from the private grounds of the gentleman who owned the last bottle, he turned the car in what seemed to be the proper course and raced along a road that was bordered with villas. It ended at a cross-road, where he was forced to make a change of direction. Then, for the next five minutes, he was alternately covering short stretches of straightaway and turning corners. The residential section devoted to summer dwellers seemed to Pete to have been provided with streets that were designed on the plan of a labyrinth. It baffled escape.
They passed people on walks and cars in the roadways, passed them at a nervous speed. Mary Wayne was huddled as low in the bathtub as she could squeeze herself, but Pete was astride a saddle in the open, and he had an annoying sense of conspicuity. He doubted if the ordinary citizen of Larchmont would accept his pink-striped pajamas with the complete equanimity that had characterized his late host. The silk garments wrapped themselves tightly around his shins, but streamed out in the rear like pennants in a gale. The rush of air sculptured his high-priced haberdashery until he resembled the Winged Victory of Samothrace.
Mary reached both hands to her head with a little cry, but too late. The picture hat had been snatched by a gust and went sailing into a hedge.
"Can't stop!" he yelled. "Mine went long ago."
She shook her head to signify that she did not want him to stop.
Still the labyrinth held them. One of its trick passages brought them into a cul de sac, where he was forced to slow down and turn in his tracks. A man on the sidewalk shouted at him, but Pete did not answer. Mary huddled closer in her refuge.
They turned another corner and came to a dead stop, with a screeching of brakes, in order to avoid collision with a touring-car approaching in the opposite direction. The touring-car also stopped. Its driver uttered an exclamation, and an instant afterward switched on a spotlight. Mary shrieked as the merciless beam fell upon her. Somebody in the car tittered.