“‘DON’T PASS GIRON AGAIN UNLESS YOU CAN DO IT IN FRONT OF THE JUDGES’ STAND’”
Yes, no speck of red had taken shape on the road ahead. The lead of the Saturn was even greater than he had feared. It must be still miles away, and Giron, supreme again, driving like the wind. That streak of red! If he could only see it, just to know that it really was within reach.
Then Stevenson caught a glimpse of car far ahead. An exclamation escaped him, only to leave him more grimly silent; for the car was gray, one of the Germans. Then he made out other cars,—white, green, and blue cars, the Jupiter, the Vegas, and the Crowns,—and soon he had overtaken them, roared past them, with their crews appalled at the awful speed, the awful daring. Now he began to curse the “Ninety” for not bearing him more swiftly, for not bringing to him that red-painted goal. And so he crashed, skidded, and battered through mile after mile, forgot the perils of “the Jericho,” the “S,” and the “Hairpin,” and drove in the grip of a mania, a boyish giant on whom the race had laid its spell.
Out of the distance there finally came to him the speck of red, a vague, blurry shape that quickly took on the lines of the Saturn. It gave him a sense of fierce pleasure, an unnatural desire to laugh aloud; and then he thought of Lescault, of his warning:
“Don’t pass Giron unless it’s in front of the judges’ stand.”
But surely Lescault could not mean for him to wait now—now when he was behind, when he had caught the red car and in a trice could snatch back a race almost lost! Of course Lescault didn’t mean that. Stevenson compressed his lips, pressed down on the accelerator, leaned slightly forward, his eyes peering over the steering-wheel.
A minute of terrific driving, and the “Ninety” had come near enough for Giron to hear the thunder of its exhausts. Employing a signal that racing crews have, he ordered his mechanician to watch its approach. The mechanician, after craning his head, turned swiftly around.
“He’s coming like the wind,” he bawled in Giron’s ear. “He’s driving like a madman!”
And Giron, who had waited patiently for this moment, who knew even when he had gained the lead that he could not hold it, that the “Ninety” was faster, the brain guiding it craftier, parted his lips as a panther does before the leap; for he thought again that the soul of Lescault was no longer driving the “Ninety,” that lusty, unthinking youth, mad with speed, had risen, overwhelming caution and sending Stevenson down into the ditch, as it had another years before.
“I’ll get him,” he murmured, and bent lower over the wheel.