"Then come with me," flashed the other unexpectedly; for a fractional instant his eyes left the road and turned to his companion's face. "Did you ever see race practice at dawn? Come try a night in a training camp."

"You'd bother with me?"

"Yes."

A head bobbed up by Ffrench's knee, where Rupert was clinging in some inexplicable fashion.

"Once I rode eight miles out there by the hood, head downward, holding in a pin," he imparted, by way of entertainment.

Ffrench stared at the reeling perch indicated, and gasped.

"What for?" he asked.

"So we could keep on to our control instead of being put out of the running, of course. Did you guess I was curing a headache?"

"But you might have been killed!" exclaimed Ffrench.

Even by the semi-light of the lamps there was visible the mechanician's droll twist of lip and brow.