"No, by Gad! It wasn't 'of course'—not by a long shot! All you had to do was to let me go, and the score—your score—would have been wiped out for good and all. Why didn't you do it?"
"Because I should have lost my bet."
"Your bet?"
"Well, yes. It wasn't exactly a bet; but I promised somebody that I would bring you back to Brewster to-night, alive and well, and able to send a telegram. And if I had let you drown yourself, I should have lost out."
"You promised somebody?—not Verda?"
"No; somebody else."
Jibbey tried to get upon his feet, couldn't quite compass it, and sat down again.
"I don't believe a word of it," he mumbled, loose-lipped. "You did it because you're not so danged tough and hard-hearted as you thought you were." And then: "Give me a lift, Monty, and get me to the auto. I guess—I'm about—all in."
Smith half led, half carried his charge up to the road and then left him to go and back the car over the three hundred-odd yards of the interspace. A final heave lifted Jibbey into his place, and it is safe to say that Colonel Dexter Baldwin's roadster never made better time than it did on the race which finally brought the glow of the Brewster town lights reddening against the eastern sky.
At the hotel Smith helped his dripping passenger out of the car, made a quick rush with him to an elevator, and so up to his own rooms on the fourth floor.