“I don’t know that he could do it,” muttered Burnham, half aloud. “But he might. That’s what has to be prevented.”
“I’ll prevent it all right,” declared Dan, who had overheard. “Do you want to look her over any more? If you don’t, I’ll take her to the storeroom and lock her in.”
“I’ve seen enough of her,” replied Burnham. “Take her up.”
Dan Saltus dropped into the low driver’s seat—with its comfortable cushions, which gave just room for the mechanician to sit by the side of the driver—and skillfully guided the car upon a flat platform elevator a few yards away.
The smoothness with which the powerful machine rolled along the concrete floor, so slowly that it appeared hardly to be moving, proved that it was a perfect bit of mechanism. One could hardly realize that its gaunt, rakish frame held the potency of a hundred miles an hour and more. It just crawled now—no more.
Victor Burnham waited patiently until Dan Saltus had taken the car to an upper floor, where it would be locked up in an iron fireproof room by itself. When the foreman came down again, Burnham remarked that the trial of the Thunderbolt was to take place at the speedway at ten the next morning.
“I know it,” replied Dan.
“You’ll be there?”
“I guess so. The boss here doesn’t like me to be away too much, for we are pretty busy. But I can trust my assistant for that length of time. We have some good men working for us, too. That’s one comfort. But you don’t want me to do any work on the Thunderbolt to-morrow, do you?” he added, with the ghost of a grin.
“No,” growled Burnham. “So long as you are on the job when the race comes off, I don’t ask anything more. But I want you to see this Thunderbolt in real action at the trial. It may give you some ideas as to how you are to fix it afterward. Good night, Dan.”