"He never did it—Corrie, I mean. Gerard, Isabel Rose threw the wrench that struck you and wrecked your car, last year. He's been shielding her. God, how I've ground it into the boy!"
There was a tall pile of spare tires beside them; on it Gerard put his hand, steadying himself against the shock that was less of surprise than of poignant self-reproach for his own failure to divine this open riddle. In that moment of final understanding, he knew that he had seen the pitiful truth rise to the surface of Corrie's blue eyes a hundred times, and had left its appeal to die out, unanswered.
Far down the course a ripple of cheering started, running nearer in a wave of gathering volume. Out around the curve swooped a gray streak, fled toward the camps, was opposite, and past. The Mercury was unleashed and hunting down its lost lead in the fastest speed of the day.
Mr. Rose brought his eyes from following its flight to meet Gerard's gaze.
"You remember how Isabel nagged him to take her around the race course in his pink machine," he reminded. "I forbade it and thought no more about the thing. Well, she got him alone—you know, I guess, that he was wild with boy's near-love for her and would have let her drag the heart out of his body—and she got his promise to take her around once. She worked the plan all out; Corrie started without his mechanician, and she waited for him a mile down the course, dressed in her riding-habit and wearing a man's cap and motor-mask. She figured that no one would notice her much on the road and Corrie could drop her off after making the circuit, just before he reached the camps, so that he would come in alone as he started and no one would be the wiser. They were just a couple of fool kids on a kid lark."
A yellow car roared to a stop beside them, interrupting clamorously. From his seat its mechanician fell rather than stepped.
"He smashed his wrist cranking her," the driver raged. "Someone else—quick!"
A blue-clad factory mechanic flung himself into the vacant place, bare-headed, without coat or mask.
"Here's my chance!" he exulted. "Go on, I'm it."
The car leaped out, no second wasted in parley. Men gathered up the injured mechanician and hurried him away. Mr. Rose looked on as if at a stage scene which did not interest him, and dully resumed his narrative.