Victor Burnham reflected with deeply contracted brows, and as he did so, any casual observer would have said that he was the very incarnation of evil. Indeed, he might have been plotting murder, as Dan Saltus had intimated, so far as could be told from the expression of his dark face.
“Here’s the thousand, Dan,” he said at last, drawing a wallet from an inside pocket. “Do you promise to get at the Thunderbolt?”
“For a thousand dollars—yes,” replied Dan, holding out his hand for the money.
Without speaking, Victor Burnham opened the wallet and counted ten hundred-dollar bills into the garage foreman’s hand.
“I’d rather have had it in smaller bills,” grumbled Dan. “It isn’t so easy to get a century changed without people wondering where you got it. But I dare say I can get away with it.”
He rolled the money into a small package and put it in a pocket under his overalls, looking at the racing car before him as he did so.
“This Columbiad is in good shape, I suppose, Dan. Nothing hurt it in the trial?”
“Not a thing. I have been over it carefully, and taken a long time to do it. She’s ready for the race this minute, if you wanted to take her out. I’ll be your mechanician, of course—as I was in the trial—and I’ll know that she’s tuned up to concert pitch when we line up. I’ve got plenty of gas in her. But I’ll draw it all out and put in fresh gas before the race, of course. I’ve got the very best grade of gasoline on the market, and I’ve strained it three times already, to make sure she’s clean.”
Victor Burnham nodded perfunctorily at all this. He knew Dan Saltus would look after all details. Gasoline, water, oil, and every part of the ugly gray machine, with its great white figure 7 painted on it in several places, would be exactly right. That was not what he had to think about.
What troubled him was that the Thunderbolt—a wonderful racer that never had been beaten by an American car so far—would also be in perfect condition. With everything else equal, he feared that Stanley Downs could push ahead of the Columbiad.