The amusement underlying Gerard's expression rippled to the surface.
"All right," he acquiesced. "Detail someone else. But, Rupert——"
"Ma'am?"
"I think you will race next spring as Corrie Rose's mechanician."
Their glances encountered, equally cool and determined.
"I'll take in washing with a Chinese partner, if you and Darling French throw me out," assured Rupert kindly. "Don't worry about my future like that."
And he slipped across the levers out of his seat, eel-supple, as Corrie issued from the office.
There was a mile loop of the perfect macadam track circling the factory buildings, then the way ran off into the country roads, inches deep with heavy sand, littered with ugly stones, rising over and pitching down steep grades where holes and mud-patches abounded. Over this the new Mercury cars were driven at top speed, each one reckoning many miles before the makers allowed them to be clothed with bodies and gleaming enamels and to be sent to the purchasers. No flaw escaped unnoticed, no weakness passed. Jaws set under their masks, keen eyes on the road and keen ears listening for the least false note in the tone-harmony of their machines, the sturdy testers drove through a day's work that would have prostrated the average motorist. Out among these men went Corrie Rose, more self-conscious than he had ever been on race track or course.
"I never had a ninety before," he confided to Gerard, as they finished the mile circuit. "A sixty was my biggest. She's, she's a beauty!"
The car slammed violently off the macadam onto the sand road, skidded in a half-circle and righted itself with a writhing jerk.