Stanley Downs.
“That ‘All well’ is a good touch,” approved Clay Varron. “It is the truth, too. When you have driven this race, everything will be well, and you will go down to New York with your twenty thousand dollars. Then you can tell your uncle about it, if you like.”
“I certainly shall tell him. I am in hopes that, if there is no loss, he will forgive me——”
“For taking a chance on being drowned to save a girl, eh?” interrupted Clay. “Well, if he doesn’t forgive you he will have a hard time explaining to his conscience. Going to take that telegram downstairs and have it sent, or will you telephone for a boy to be sent here?” asked Clay.
“I think I’ll walk around with it to the office. Then I shall know it gets off right away,” decided Stanley. “Will you dine with me to-night?”
“Can’t, dear boy,” answered Clay. “I’ve promised to take dinner with the Ranfelts, at their hotel. Then we are going to a theater. By the way, you were invited, too—weren’t you?”
“Yes. But I begged off. I knew this telegram was here, and, to tell the truth, I didn’t feel like talking and seeing a show. There are only two more clear days before the race, and I think I shall use them in resting, except when I am exercising the Thunderbolt on the speedway. I want to get used to that track.”
“There is not much to be learned about it. I should think,” said Vernon. “It is almost a counterpart of the speedway at Sheepshead. Two-mile oval, with two half-mile straightaways and two half-mile turns.”
“Yes, I know all that,” interrupted Stanley. “And at the curves the outside edges rise to twenty-five feet. The track is seventy feet wide. You see, I have all its dimensions. I even know that it is built of two-by-four pine, laid on edge. But all that means little to a man in a big race, unless he has practiced again and again. No matter how smooth a track may seem to be, there are sure to be little kinks that a driver should know.”
“In what way are there kinks?”