[CHAPTER XIV.]
COMING OF THE "COMET."
Matt hardly dared hope for success. There was a chance—perhaps one chance in a hundred—that everything would work as it should, and Penny arrive along the Black Cañon road with the Comet in time for Matt to make such a run into Phœnix as was never heard of before. But when Matt thought of the many things on which success hinged, his heart stood still before the very audacity of his thought of winning out.
In the first place, everything depended on the quickness with which a number of intricate details were accomplished in Phœnix—and all these were left in the hands of a girl! True, Susie McReady was a girl in a hundred, quick-witted, and able to hustle in a pinch, but it was not to be supposed that she could do as well as Chub would have done.
Then, Susie would have to take chances getting Major Woolford on the phone. In the crowd at the park it might be impossible to find the major for an hour—and it was quite likely a loss of ten minutes would spell disaster. But if Susie could get the major on the phone, Matt knew that the energetic president of the Phœnix Club would move heaven and earth to find Penny and start him along the Black Cañon road.
The major, too, would delay the start of the bicycle-race as long as he could. Prescott, however, if it saw a chance to pull off the race without Matt, was allowed to insist, under the rules governing the contests, that the starter bring the racers to the mark on the dot.
As the difficulties before him piled steadily up under Matt's mental view, he halted his pace, almost discouraged by the outlook. Clipperton toiled up alongside of him.
"You shouldn't have tried to chase along with me, Clip," said Matt. "You're pretty near all in, old man. Jupiter! but you've made a record this day!"
"You can make a better one," panted Clipperton. "I want you to make good. But how are you going to? Put me next."
Matt explained about Chub's wireless line, about the seven-horse-power motor-cycle which could do sixty-five miles an hour on the high speed if a rider was reckless enough and had the right kind of a road, and he finished by giving the situation at the Phœnix end of the route.