No sooner had Stevenson crossed the finish-line than the Mercury Motor-Car Company’s representatives telephoned Garden City and arranged for a banquet. But banquets were not for Stevenson that night. The fate of Giron lay heavy upon him. It had shadowed his joy in winning. The strain of the race over, he had broken down; and in breaking down it seemed to him that he had rushed to success over another man’s body.
At the hospital, where he had gone to inquire as soon as he could tear himself away from the swarms at the finish-line, the day nurse had told him that Giron would be a cripple for life. She had added that, oddly enough, a crippled little Frenchman had been there an hour ago, and that he, too, had been anxious to know about Giron.
“Good old Lescault!” thought Stevenson as he drove back to Krugs. “Always the first to think of a man in danger.”
Then he found himself wishing that Lescault were at his side. Now more than ever before he felt the need of the strange little Frenchman, the man who had made him, the man to whom he could now turn in this time of depression, of worried conscience, and even of half-guilt, he thought with a start. Had not Giron gone into the ditch to avoid a collision, to save him? He wasn’t the hero, he thought bitterly. It was Giron—poor Giron!
Stevenson found Lescault in his room. The little fellow had his chair drawn up close to the old-fashioned fireplace, in which wood was burning. He was smoking a cigarette, and if he heard Stevenson enter, he gave no sign. Instead, he gazed steadily at some charred bits of cardboard strewn about the edges of the fire—thick cardboard, and one piece only partly burned appeared to be a photograph.
The red glow of the fire shone on the little man’s face as Stevenson drew a chair beside him. In the flickering light the boy thought he saw him grin; but it might have been only the play of the shadows.
“It’s terrible about Giron, isn’t it, Jean?” he said abruptly, unable to endure the silence. “Think of it—that man at the height of his power suddenly crippled, never able to drive again, a great career ended so terribly!”
The little man at his side looked up.
“No, he’ll never drive again,” said Lescault.
Stevenson wondered at his tone, the look that had come into his face, the queer burning of his eyes, eery, unholy.