Lawrence K. Ranfelt brushed the question aside, with a careless wave of the hand, as he let a column of cigar smoke issue from his lips.
“What does it matter who offers it?” he demanded, with a flush rather deeper than his usual color on his cheeks, while his keen eyes danced with amusement. “It will not belong to anybody until it has been won for three years in succession, on the Prentiss Speedway. Burnham, here, thinks he can carry it off for the first time.”
“I’ll try,” growled Burnham. “As for the person who offers it, I don’t see any use in making a mystery of that. It will all come out later. It is Mr. Ranfelt who is giving it. He uses his first name, Lawrence, instead of his surname—that’s all.”
Lawrence K. Ranfelt burst out into his jolly laugh, as he slapped Burnham on the shoulder.
“Yes, that’s true,” he admitted. “But there is something else, much more interesting than the fact that I have hung up the cup for competition. That is that Helen has publicly announced—at home, of course—that she will think the man who wins this cup the greatest hero she knows.”
“Indeed?” asked Stanley, laughing. “That is enough to make anybody want to be entered in the race. The twenty thousand dollars would be nothing in comparison.”
“Well, I don’t know,” declared Ranfelt, more soberly. “That’s a good sum of money. I have nothing to do with the purse, however. The Speedway Association, through Colonel Frank Prentiss, is offering that. And the best of the purse is that it belongs, out and out, to the man who wins it. He won’t have to go on driving in other races, year after year, as he will to become the permanent holder of the cup.”
Stanley Downs did not reply. But he was thoughtful, and when he reached the drawing-room with the others, he had so little to say that Helen Ranfelt, obviously piqued, was especially gracious to Victor Burnham, and hardly noticed Stanley at all.
“I believe I’ll do it!” was what Stanley kept on repeating to himself.
He was saying it mentally when he reached his bedroom a few hours later, and gazed out of the window at the long winding road down the mountain.