His figures verified, Lescault waited impatiently for the Saturn to appear. If it came just one minute ahead of the “Ninety,” his schedule was true. Time dragged; the crowd settled back; the tense vigil disintegrated into stretchings and yawnings. The stage of a Vanderbilt is not reset quickly, but long before the signal “Car coming!” passed for miles from mouth to mouth, grew from a murmur to a shout, and threw the grand stand into tumult, Lescault’s trained ear had caught the distant rumble of the Saturn. Giron was driving hard. Lescault saw that he passed the grand stand with the engine “wide open,” forcing the car to its utmost. Then the Saturn roared away, and out of the distance came another apparition that, flashing by in a blur of white, cast up dust and was gone. Down in the pits, Lescault, one of few who had recognized the white car, so great was its speed, drew his hideous features into a smile.
His stop-watch had told him that Stevenson’s first lap was at seventy-seven miles an hour, a gain of more than two minutes on the unbeaten Giron! And he grinned again when back of him men began to ask of one another in surprise:
“Who is this Stevenson? He’s beaten the life out of Giron. Who is he?”
No one knew anything but what the program had printed, and down in the pits the crippled little Frenchman was enjoying himself as he never had before. Each bewildered question was as music to his ears.
Quarter of an hour later the white “Ninety” and the red Saturn again crashed past, only this time Giron was behind. Even the advantage that his starting position had given him was gone, and Stevenson led by five minutes. So one lap followed another, a whirligig of blurred wheels and flaming hoods, sweeping round and round that oblong of Long Island country-side, strewing men and machines as it went.
Soon reports of accidents began to come in. In trying to keep up with the awful pace, the other drivers were overtaxing their machines. Already two cars had collapsed on the course, burying their crews beneath them. Others,—a score of them, with the Vegas, and the Germans, painted gray,—limping, had stopped at the repair pits, and Lescault had laughed. What chance had they with the white “Ninety” and his brain?
Complacently he saw Stevenson push his car past the Saturn a second time. Near Westbury he had driven wonderfully, and obtained a lead of more than a length of the course over the favorite. And this time, when the Saturn rushed by, Lescault saw that Giron had stopped his waving to the grand stand. Clever driver that he was, Giron now realized that the early lead of the “Ninety” was more than a fluke, more than sensational forcing of a car beyond its limits, only to have it collapse with the goal miles away. In Stevenson he had come to recognize a new driver of rare power, a rival worthy of his steel. All Giron’s attention was demanded on the wheel.
Another swift rimming of the course, and Lescault saw the “Ninety” slacken speed coming up the stretch. Stevenson would stop, probably for gasolene or water. And Lescault was glad. Indeed, fortune seemed to be favoring him that day. It was tremendously important that he have a word with Stevenson at this stage of the race. Lescault had remembered that it was at such a time in the Grand Prix that Giron had broken him—waited on a lonely stretch of road until he had tried to pass and then had ditched him.
“Don’t,” he told Stevenson, while mechanics swarmed about the throbbing “Ninety”—“don’t pass Giron again unless you can do it in front of the judges’ stand.”
Stevenson showed his amazement. A question was on his lips.