Then he learned, with a shock, that Sadie was to be his racing-companion once more. She had walked into Santoni’s office and offered to give exhibitions on the old terms; and Santoni, being too good a business man, and too stout withal to stand on his head for joy, had shaken her by both hands, and spent an afternoon in devising a poster more sensational than any he had previously compassed.
When he wrote “America’s Foremost Queen of the Track” it seemed to him weak and colorless; and he threw adjectives into it until Sadie had a title as long as her arm.
Teddy slipped away and hid himself when he saw her arrive, with a knot of admirers, to survey the track. An expensively tailored costume emphasized her recent prosperity, and her obvious gaiety of manner was like a snub. When she laughingly pointed out to her companions the precise spot on which she had struck the providential wire fence, Teddy shuddered and turned away.
In the garage he came upon a mechanic overhauling her mount, an excessively powerful machine with four cylinders, its frame enameled bright scarlet, and nickeled in an unusual degree. It looked a sufficiently dangerous mount for a strong and skilful man racing on a spacious track. He shrank from seeing Sadie ride it in the restricted circle of the soup-plate.
When they appeared on the track in the evening, however, he could no longer ignore her presence. Indeed, she came behind him and slapped him gaily on the shoulder, such a trim, joyously captivating midget, in her scarlet leather motor-jacket, that his heart leaped at the sight of her.
“Who said I couldn’t come back, Teddy Rocco?” she asked, and the familiar, curious huskiness of her voice thrilled him so that he could not reply.
“I’m going to make you look like a never-was to-night, Teddy-Eddy,” she went on, with a sort of malicious exhilaration in her manner. “I expect you’re still single?”
“Oh, cut it out, Sadie!” he pleaded. “I never done you any harm.”
“Do you love me as much as ever?” asked little Miss Simmons, with an unwonted feline delight in cruelty. “The villain thought he had the poor little girl just where he wanted her, didn’t he? But the kind, handsome doctor rescued her all right; and now she’s going to make the villain look like thirty cents.”
“You’ll have to go some,” said Teddy, grinning miserably, as he stooped to adjust his carbureter. When he mounted his machine he was in a white-hot, searing temper. If all the women in the world had been laid side by side on an endless track, he would have ridden over their necks at that moment with an exquisite pleasure.