“If anything in the way of business had detained him he would have telephoned,” said the girl. “I wonder if anything could have happened? Highfield Lane is lonesome after dark, and he would come that way.”
She waited a bit longer, growing more nervous all the while, and then she came to a decision.
“I’m going to walk along toward the Lane and see if he’s coming,” she said.
Mary expected to see her father out in front, also peering down through the darkness for the approach of Tom’s headlights, for the young inventor and Mr. Nestor were firm friends. But the glow of two cigars on a side porch and the murmur of voices there told Mary that her father had met Mr. Goodrich, from next door, and the two were visiting.
“Where are you going, Mary?” her father called to her as he heard her go out the front gate.
“To look for Tom. He’ll be along pretty soon.”
Though the girl peered sharply all along the quarter of a mile that lay between her house and Highfield Lane, she did not see her lover. Then she turned into the lane proper and caught sight of the glowing lights of a car she knew, because of their peculiar position, to be on the runabout.
“Here he comes now!” Mary exclaimed. A moment later she was aware that the lights were not moving. The car was standing still. “He must have had a break down,” thought Mary. She knew, from often having ridden in it, that the car lights were hooked up to a separate battery from the powerful ones that operated the motor.
When the girl, wondering what had happened, hurried toward the machine, she stumbled over Tom’s body, prone on the ground. She recognized him by the light from the car lamps.
“Oh, Tom! what has happened?” she cried.