Of a hot summer night at this hour the pike was alive with autos; returning holiday-makers, city dwellers taking a spin in the country to cool off, joy riders rioting by, belated business men speeding to the sea-side for the Sunday rest. They bore down on Ferguson like a procession of fleeing monsters with round, goblin eyes staring in affright. They came from behind, swinging across his path in a blur of dust, laughter and shrill cries rising from their crowded tonneaus. Keeping to their narrow track between the borders of the fields they were like a turbulent, flashing torrent, dividing the darkness with a stream of streaked radiance, cutting the silence with a current of continuous sound.
Ferguson's glance ranged ahead, dazzled by the glare of advancing lamps that enlarged on his vision, grew to a blinding haze and swept by. He could see little, blackness and brightness alternating, the motors emerging as dim solidities, realized for a passing moment, then gone. Once a small car, cutting across his bows from a side road, made him slacken, but it slowed round showing the gnarled face of a farmer with a fat woman on the seat beside him and a bunch of children behind.
As he went on the press of vehicles thinned, the line of the road showed bare for longer stretches. The runabout overhauled him, kept by his side for a few yards, then drew ahead, its red tail lantern receding with an even, skimming smoothness; a spot, a spark, nothing. He calculated he had covered nearly half the distance when the black racer passed in a soft, purring rush, his eye, through the yellow fog that preceded it, catching a glimpse of Price's face. Then came a long, straight level between fields where only two cars went by, both going cityward. He looked back and tried to see the road behind him, straining his vision for a following shape, but the darkness lay close and unbroken, no goblin eyes peering through it in anxious pursuit.
The road took a dive into woods, black as a cavern, the air breathless. It wound in sharp curves, his lamps sending their swinging rays into thickets, then out again on a hilltop, and down, swooping with a long, smooth glide into a valley. Here the touring car passed him and he met a limousine, traveling at a pace as sober as his own, in its lit interior two men talking; after that a farmer's wagon drawn up against the roadside grasses, the horse prancing in fractious fear. Then nobody—a wide strip of open country with the sky setting down like an arched lid over the low circular surface of the land.
It was very still and his listening ear caught the buzzing hum of a vehicle behind him. This time he did not turn but drew off further to the right, and a closed coupé swung by, with the jarring rattle of an old and loose-geared body. He was on the alert at once, its hooded shape suggesting secrecy, the surrounding loneliness apt for its design. Its tail light cast a bobbing, crimson blot on the bed and he saw its back, dust-grimed and rusty, and the numbered oblong of its license tag. That caused his expectancy to drop—the tag stood for respectability and honest wayfaring, then, with a quickened leap of his heart, he realized that its speed was slackening. It slowed down to his own gait, and at the limit of his lamp's illumination, moved before him, a square bulk, its back cut by a small window. He felt sure now, and with his hand on the wheel took a look over his shoulder. In the distance, cresting a rise, he saw two golden dots, too far for a speedy overtaking, and even if that were possible he had no reason to suppose they belonged to any of his followers.
A belt of woods spread across the way and the road entered it as if tunneling a vault. It wound, looped and twisted, tree trunks and leafy hollows starting out as the long bright tubes swept over them. As one of these, slewing wide in a sharper turn, crossed the bank of the forward car, Ferguson saw an arm extended and from the hand a white spark flash twice. Almost immediately the coupé turned to the left, and plunged into a by-way, black as a pocket, the woods' thick growth crowding on its edges.
The roadbed was good and the leading car accelerated its speed racing onward under the arching boughs. Ferguson, close on its heels, knew that the sounds of their going would be muffled by the enshrouding woodland, absorbed in its woven density. No chance either of meeting any one; the way was one of those forest trails, sought by the rich on their afternoon drives, but at night deserted by all but the birds and the squirrels. Cursing at the failure of his schemes, powerless now to protest or to retaliate, he followed until he knew by a freshening of the air that they were near the Sound. The coupé's speed began to lessen and it came to a halt.
Ferguson drew up a few rods behind it. He could see the trees about him picked out in detail and behind them the engulfing darkness. The machine in front still seemed to shake and vibrate; he caught the sound of a step and then a voice, a man's, deep and low-keyed:
"This is the place. Get out."
He jumped to the ground, discerning a shape by the coupé's door. He advanced, peering through his lantern's intervening glare, and made out it was alone. Stung with a quick fear, he halted and said.