"Well done!" Eve applauded—"Oh, well done!"
"Wait!" Lanyard prayed, with the man in mind who had sprinted from the lighted doorway toward the other car—"physical fact to the contrary notwithstanding, we're not out of the woods yet."
His toe found the accelerator pedal, the motor responded with a mettlesome snort and a drumming drone that waxed apace, the car clove the night like a frightened cat . . .
After a mile or so of fast going on a road whose wendings required for safe navigation a sure hand and eye, Lanyard felt confidence confirmed in his ability to handle the brougham with fair skill and extract from its motor the best it had to give. And when, before long, a rarely long stretch of straight road made a fair trial feasible, he coaxed the speedometer by degrees up to, then past the mark 50, without feeling that he was tempting fate.
Toward the end of that dash, Eve, who had been keeping an eye on the road astern, reported it bare of pursuing headlights.
"Do you mean to try for that railroad?"
"No—not now, not since things have turned out as they have."
"I am glad," she told him coolly. "This night is too lovely to be spoiled by travelling in a stuffy train."
"Is it?" he queried in grim humour.
"Do you not find it so, my Michael?"