His engine had stalled, and he set to work to crank it, while Lexy stood beside him.
“Drive awfully fast, will you?” she asked.
He was too busy to answer for a moment. Then, when his engine was running again, he straightened up and looked at her.
“No, ma’am!” he said firmly. “No more of that for me! Not after what happened a while ago. No, ma’am! I had my lesson!”
“An accident?” inquired Lexy politely.
“Well,” he said slowly, “I s’pose it was; but the more I think it over, the more I dunno!”
In the brightness cast by the headlights, Lexy could see his face very well, and the look on it gave her a strange little thrill of fear. It was not a handsome or intelligent face, but it was a very honest one, and she saw, written plain upon it, a very honest doubt and dismay. Like herself, he wasn’t sure.
“It was this way,” he went on. “About three miles up Carterstown way there’s a bad piece of road. There’s a steep hill, and a crossroad cuts across the foot of it, and it’s too narrer for two cars to pass. It’s a bad piece, and I always been keerful there. I was keerful that night. I was coming along the crossroad, and I heard another car somewhere, and I sounded the horn two or three times before I come to the foot of the hill. Jest as I got there, and was turning up the hill, down comes another car, full tilt. I couldn’t git out o’ the way. There’s stone walls on both sides. I tried to back, but he crashed into me. I kind of fainted, I guess. My cab was all smashed up, and I was cut pretty bad with glass. They found me lying there about an hour after. The other fellow—he was killed.” He stopped for a minute. “If it hadn’t been fer his license number, nobody could ’a’ known who he was, he was so smashed up. Seems he was from New York, driving a taxi belonging to one of them big companies.”
“Poor fellow!” said Lexy.
“Yes,” said the other solemnly. “I kin say that, too, whatever he meant to do.”