“Why, don’t you see, Excellency,” I persisted, “that the car hauls the whole argument clean out of the gumbo of ‘personal liberty’—clean out of the slough of ‘private conscience’? We don’t know how this accident out here in the street took place; but in our Mid-Western metropolis we killed some seven hundred people last year with cars, and, according to the papers, there was more than one such accident as this one from drivers who were drunk. With one out of every seven men, women, children, and babies in the United States driving a car at from twenty to forty miles an hour, along crowded streets and thoroughfares from Maine to California, we have simply got to prevent drivers from being drunk. It’s in the necessity of the situation. We are all private engineers nowadays. That’s what we want. Very well. If we all want to be private engineers, we’ve got to submit to the same regulations as governed—long since—engineers on the railways. Our job is not less hazardous than theirs, but more so. A railway engineer who drinks is fired by the railroad, and I understand by his own union.”
“I’m stiff on that,” said His Excellency. “A man who drives his car when he’s drunk should be strung up to the nearest telegraph pole.”
“Oh no,” said Willys, “you’re a little hard on him. You can’t stop a man drinking because he occasionally drives his car, drunk. Give him a good fine and take away his license. Or, if he is very drunk, put him where he can sober up.”
“That wouldn’t,” I said, “quite straighten things out—would it—for the occupants of the car that went by here?”
“Oh, but Professor, you are so unrealistic,” said Willys, as he rose and clapped a hand over his mouth in order to eject a yawn which he could not swallow. “You are hopelessly unrealistic. If a man doesn’t drive when he’s drunk, now and then, how in the dickens is he going to get home? What time is it?”
“It’s half-past one,” said Cornelia, who had also risen at the first opportunity. “And there’s the telephone. See what it is, Oliver—quickly, quickly! But nothing could have happened to them—my son is such a careful driver.”
VII
THE VENGEANCE OF DIONYSUS
Oliver stepped to his desk and removed the receiver. There was an inevitable moment of suspense. Then tossing to us with a smile: “It’s the Infant—they’re all right,” he turned again to the telephone and listened for nearly five minutes, during which he said “yes” several times, “What’s that?” once, and concluded with “I’ll come immediately.”
Then he faced us with a curious smile, meant to be reassuring, and, with that promptitude of thought and action which idle Americans in Europe are understood to exhibit on the outbreak of war, said swiftly and decisively:—
“Oliver has been arrested for speeding. I’ll have to go and bail him out. They are letting the girls come home. They will be here any minute. Willys, will you go downstairs to the office and tell them to send a taxi here at once? Professor, you go, too, and meet the girls downstairs. I want to have a word with Cornelia. If Dorothy comes before I join you, keep her there a minute. Yes, put on your coats—we’ll not come back. Willys and I will look after this business; the Professor will go on, to his train.”