THE trial of the Thunderbolt was an entire success. As Stanley Downs had said, the car was tuned to perfection, while he, the driver, was as good as his machine. The two worked together like one organism.
There were several hundred people at the speedway to see the trial, although it was not a public exhibition. The spectators included drivers of other cars, mechanicians, officers of the speedway—including the manager,Colonel Frank Prentiss—and other persons who were connected in various ways with the track and the race that was to take place on Thursday.
Stanley did not push his car too hard, but he went over the two miles in a minute and twenty seconds, which was at the rate of ninety miles an hour. This admitted the car to the cup race, the requirement being a speed of not less than eighty-five miles an hour.
When the trial was over, and as soon as he could get away from the swarm of interested people who crowded about the car after it had passed the judges’ stand and been declared qualified, Stanley left the track and made his way to the garage, where he turned the Thunderbolt over to his mechanician.
He had had a telegram from his uncle that morning which he should have answered before—only that he did not know what to say. It disturbed him so that it was only by desperately concentrating his mind on the business immediately in hand that he had been enabled to drive in the trial.
The telegram was brief and to the point. It read as follows:
Have heard that you met with accident in mountains not far from Poughkeepsie. Is money safe? Answer at once.Richard Burwin.
Have heard that you met with accident in mountains not far from Poughkeepsie. Is money safe? Answer at once.
Richard Burwin.
“What shall I do about this, Clay?” asked Stanley of his friend, as the two pored over the telegram in Stanley’s room at the hotel. “The money is at the bottom of the lake. I suppose it is safe enough, but I haven’t got it,” he added grimly.
“I suppose you must answer the wire?” observed Varron, with, a questioning look.
“If you knew my uncle as well as I do,” returned Stanley, “you would not ask that. Of course I must answer it.”
“Well, then, I’d give him the answer you just now gave me.”
Stanley looked at him, puzzled, for a moment. Then he uttered a short laugh and shook his head.
“You mean that I shall telegraph him the money is safe?”
“Just that,” replied Clay Varron. “You said yourself it was safe. That is what he asks.”
“That would be a prevarication. I don’t see how I can say that. He wouldn’t consider it safe if I told him where it was. No, Clay, I can’t do it. My uncle is always square with me. I should feel like a crook if I sent him such a message as that.”
“Well, what will you do? If you tell him the truth, what will be the consequence?”
“The consequence will be that he will think I am a fool,” answered Stanley Downs, without hesitation.
“He couldn’t think that, unless he’s a fool himself,” was Clay’s warm rejoinder. “Come again.”
“Well, he would know that I had failed in a matter where I should have used extreme care, and I doubt whether he ever would trust me again. I have fallen down, and there is no getting away from it.”
Stanley Downs strode up and down the room in such a dejected frame of mind that his friend became indignant.
“What’s the matter with you, Stan? Buck up! You took a risk of your life to save a girl, and you did what any man ought to do. The fact that some of them would have held back is nothing to do with the case. When you knew that that crazy kid cousin of mine was driving straight to a horrible death, you followed her up and brought her through. If you call that ‘falling down,’ or behaving like a fool, then I can only say I wish there were more fools like you in the world.”
Stanley Downs placed his two hands affectionately on the shoulders of his loyal friend and looked him in the eyes, as he asked earnestly:
“Clay, now, on the level, would youask me to tell a deliberate lie to my uncle, who has always been straight with me—who has been indeed more than a father—and who would fight any man who dared even to hint that I would juggle with the truth? Would you?”
Clay Varron coughed in embarrassment. Then he answered, in as earnest a voice as Stanley’s own:
“Of course you can’t do it, Stan. But I don’t know what to advise you to telegraph him. I don’t, by gosh!”
“There is only one way out of it that I can see,” declared Stanley, after a few minutes’ cogitation. “That is, to evade his question for the present. I am in hopes that after Thursday I shall be able to go to New York with the money.”
“You will, old man,” was Clay’s eager response. “You’ll win that race and have twenty thousand dollars, to replace what you have lost. I am sure of that. I believed it before I saw the trial to-day. Now Iknowthere is nothing can beat the Thunderbolt, with you at the wheel. This Columbiad may be a good car. I believe it is. But, the cars being equal—and I have no idea that the Columbiad isbetterthan the Thunderbolt, you are a better driver than Burnham. That will give you just the ‘edge’ you require to come in first. Your judgment in driving will beat Burnham, as sure as that the sun will rise to-morrow morning.”
There was no resisting the enthusiasm of Clay Varron. A smile broke over Stanley’s troubled countenance, and it was with a feeling of confidence that he took up a pad of telegraph blanks from a table to write a message to Richard Burwin.
He was some little time composing the telegram. At last, however, he had written what he thought would be the best thing, and he read it to Clay, in the following words:
Am detained in Buffalo until after the automobile race on Thursday. Have business with Colonel Prentiss. Will come to New York on Friday. All well.Stanley Downs.
Am detained in Buffalo until after the automobile race on Thursday. Have business with Colonel Prentiss. Will come to New York on Friday. All well.
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. Thetrack 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?”
“Little waves where the going rises slightly—almost imperceptibly—and yet which will make a fast-running car swerve. You know that, Clay. You are an automobilist.”
Clay Varron nodded. He did, indeed, understand how slight an obstruction will change the course of a motor car when going at high speed. There could be no argument as to the wisdom of a driver trying out the track as often as possible.
“Of course. Stan, it would be foolish in you to neglect all possible precautions. So I suppose it was wise for you to pass up this dinner-and-show game to-night. There’ll be supper after the theater, of course, and I dare say it will be two o’clock in the morning, if not later, before the fair-haired boy who is talking to you will sink upon his downy pillow.”
“Drivers in three-hundred-and-fifty-mile cup races should not stay up till two in the morning,” said Stanley, with a laugh. “So I have plenty of excuse for not being with you to-night.”
“Another thing, Stan, that might have decided you to remain away is that Victor Burnham will be in the party. I don’t believe you like him any more than I do. Besides, he will be your principal opponent in the race, I think, and you wouldn’t want to talk about it, I know.”
“But he would, I guess?”
“Sure! He’s just the kind of bounder who would try to get your goat by talking about the difficulties of the thing, and wondering whether your car will stand the racket.”
“That would be very unsportsmanlike,” remarked Stanley, with a shrug.
“Of course. That’s why Burnham would do it. He’s a scalawag through and through, Stan. I know that. I’ve met him before. And, I tell you, old man, when you are in the race, you want to look out for him. If there is anything he can do to foul you, that’s what he’ll do.”
Stanley Downs laughed disdainfully.
“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! Imustwin!”
He was so taken up with his thoughts that he never noticed two rather under-sizedyouths, 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.