“Yes. Some kind of a foreigner. A very learned man, I believe,” Mary said, with rising confidence. “What Dr. Goslap tells mother and me about him encourages us vastly. Dr. Raddiker is a great diagnostician.”
“Wonder what sort of a doctor this fellow needs who is coming along the road?” demanded Tom suddenly. “He’ll have that car climbing the telephone poles next.”
“Goodness, Tom!” cried Mary, likewise seeing the eccentrically acting car ahead of them, and evidently heading for Shopton. “He’ll have it in the ditch next.”
“Great Scott!” shouted Tom. “That’s exactly where he has got it!”
At that moment the car ahead backed around into the hedge on one side of the highway and then shot across the road and plunged, nose-first, into the deep ditch on the other side, which was here undefended by a railing. Tom and Mary heard a wild shout for “Hellup!” and then an explosion of phrases that the young inventor was glad were uttered in some foreign tongue, for he feared that they were not polite enough for Mary’s ear.
Tom Swift speeded up his runabout and they reached the scene of the accident just as the awkward chauffeur was crawling out of the mud. The nose of the car was buried in the mire and the occupant of the tonneau of the car was struggling with the door while he ejaculated in broken English:
“Hellup! Why for did I let such a dumbskull drive de car? Ach! I should be shot for my foolishness, undt he should be hung for inefficiency. Yah! Hellup!”
Mary hopped out of Tom’s car quickly and ran to help the excited stranger open the door of the closed car. But Tom turned his attention to the chauffeur. Nothing could be done for the car itself, he saw at a glance, on its own power.
“Hi!” Tom shouted to the fellow in the ditch. “Go back and shut off your engine. She is heading for China right now. Want her to go there?”
“She can go to perdition for all of me!” grumbled the mud-covered chauffeur. “She’s got the Old Boy in her.”