“There isn’t much chance of a driver fouling another in an automobile race without his risking his own neck, as well as the other fellow’s, Clay. I can take care of myself when once we are going.”
“I reckon so,” agreed Clay Varron. “Well, I’ll walk with you as far as the telegraph office. We’ll take those back streets. They are a short cut. You know the way, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Come on!”
The two young men walked briskly from the hotel, and in ten minutes Stanley was handing in his telegram, telling the clerk to send an answer, if there should be one, to the hotel.
Clay Varron had left his friend at the door of the telegraph office, and was on his way to his room, to dress for the dinner to which he had been invited.
When the message had been filed and paid for, Stanley came out alone and strolled along busy Main Street for several blocks, thinking of the strange curve of the ball of fate that had brought him to Buffalo again, to become a driver in this great race.
“If I weren’t so worried about that money, I should enjoy the experience, just for itself,” he murmured. “As it is, I am so anxious to win that it may be the cause of my defeat. Defeat? No, sir! I must win!”
He was so taken up with his thoughts that he never noticed two rather under-sized youths, with the furtive air and in the flashily cut cheap clothing peculiar to the underworld class, known as “gangsters” in most large American cities, who kept always at the same short distance behind him, and who never let him out of their sight.