Bertha, charging up to the intersection, was met with a closed signal and a stream of cross traffic.
A quick searching glance convinced Bertha no traffic cop was in the immediate vicinity. She snapped the car into second gear, watched her opportunity, and after the first rush had subsided, took advantage of an opening to shoot across the street to the accompaniment of screaming brakes, raucous horns, and some verbiage which, while it was intended to be scathing, bounced off Bertha’s heedless ears like hailstones from a barn roof.
The car ahead now had a lead of a good hundred and fifty yards but was still crawling along. Bertha, slamming her gearshift back into high, keeping a heavy foot on the throttle, swiftly shortened the lead to a hundred yards. Then her quarry turned left, making the turn with exasperating slowness, the driver giving a perfect full-arm signal.
Bertha came charging up to the intersection, glanced down a vacant street, lost time with her brakes.
It hardly seemed possible the car could have gained the other corner and disappeared, yet there seemed no other explanation. The driver must then have speeded up the car.
Bertha reached a swift decision. The car had turned either to the left or to the right at the next intersection. A turn to the left would mean that the car was doubling back; that would be the reaction of a driver who was trying to avoid a shadow, hardly compatible with her previous sedate course or the full-armed left-hand signal at the previous intersection. The logical thing, therefore, was to turn to the right.
Bertha, floorboarding the throttle, spun over to the left so that she would have more room for a screaming right turn at the intersection.
She felt the springs of the car sway as she slammed the machine into the turn.
Midway in the turn, Bertha jerked her head for a surprised glance over her shoulder, then she was fighting the brake and the steering-wheel.
The car she wanted wasn’t on the road ahead, all but precluding Bertha’s theory of a right-hand turn, making it now seem possible the driver had discovered she was being followed.