V
THE VASE OF AL-MANSOR
On the threshold of his father's model garage Corrie stopped, surveying the scene presented in the centre of the huge, lofty stone room, bare except for the five automobiles ranged around and their countless appurtenances disposed upon walls and shelves.
"Excuse me, but when did you two last wash?" he jeered.
The two men beside the Mercury racing car looked up at the figure in the sunny doorway.
"I don't care to try to prove that I ever did," returned Gerard. "The evidence is against me. But Rupert had his beauty bath this morning, all right. You're looking rather disarranged, yourself; perhaps the course was a trifle dusty."
They laughed silently across at one another. The trim garments of all three men were gray with dust and oil, their faces were streaked and spotted with the caked road-soil. There was little difference in color between Gerard's brown ripples of hair, Corrie's blonde locks and the black head of the mechanician who bent over the motor.
"If this is practice work, what is the race going to be like?" speculated Corrie, dragging off his gauntlets. The recent speed-exhilaration was still heavily upon him; as with his sister, the darker shading of brows and lashes always gave his fair-tinted face a warm vividness of expression. "The course is in fierce shape, already. I say—why did you especially warn me that the road wouldn't be fit for fast going until to-morrow, then get out in your own machine and break all practice records for the fastest lap? Trying to keep me out of your way, or to break your neck and Rupert's?"
"The first, certainly," Gerard asserted. "Really, I didn't mean to do any speeding to-day, Corrie, but when I saw the white road ahead, I—think something slipped."