CHAPTER XXIII
QUEER ACTIONS OF NO. 41
Dan stood silently, his teeth on his lower lip, his face heavy withthought. Billy continued:
“How ever did Chance do it?”
“That’s where he went when he got up so early this morning at the inn.He went to the gasoline station, bribed somebody there, and got the cansfilled with water. One thing is sure, we’ll make whoever helped himsuffer for it.”
“But what good will that do?” demanded Billy, “when we have lost therace?”
“We haven’t lost the race!” snapped his brother.
“We’re stalled here, I tell you!” cried Billy, waving his armsexcitedly.
“I know it.”
“What are you going to do for power? How you going to get to the nextstation—fly? You say the word and I’ll run all the way to the nearesttown and buy the gasoline, and bring it back in a wagon. But it willtake oceans of time.”
“I know it,” gritted Dan. “We’ve got to have it quicker thanthat—listen!”
“Another car coming. Another set of joshers,” complained Billy, who didnot like being made a target for fun.
The car they heard was coming at full speed. Dan hesitated, and thenstepped around the drab car and looked up the road. The runningautomobile appeared.
“Hooray!” yelled Billy. “It’s Mr. Briggs’ car. He’ll help us.”
The huge “forty-one” was plain upon the hood of the automobile. As itcame on, however, the chauffeur showed no intention of reducing speed.
This was not a bad bit of road where the Speedwell boys were stalled.Car forty-one was evidently striving to make up some of the miles it hadlost on the previous day. It came on like the wind!
Dan and Billy both waved their hands. The car did not swerve, nor didthe chauffeur pay them the compliment of pulling down in the least.
The huge Postlethwaite swept on, was guided around the stalled car withskill, and rushed past and on around the next curve in the road—and allso quickly that the boys were speechless for a moment with surprise.
“Did you ever?” finally gasped Billy.
“Henri never even winked at us,” growled Dan.
“And if he had, you wouldn’t have seen that wink,” observed his brother,with a nervous gasp. “Say! that was mean!”
“Of course, they didn’t have to stop.”
“No. But it wouldn’t have hurt Mr. Briggs to pull down for a moment.”
“He never even looked at us.”
“No. He sat in there beside Henri, ready to help him take the curves. Inever thought he’d be so mean,” complained Billy.
“Here’s another!” exclaimed his brother.
They turned to see a second automobile come around the bend in the road.It was not going so fast. It was numbered thirty-seven.
Before it reached the Speedwells it slowed down and the man at the wheeldemanded:
“Did you see that maroon car just now?”
“Of course!” exclaimed Dan and Billy together.
“It was number forty-one, wasn’t it?” demanded the chauffeur ofthirty-seven, and he seemed very angry.
“Yes.”
“Well, we’re going to report that car. It ought to be barred out of therace,” sputtered the man.
“What’s that?” gasped Dan, while Billy looked, open-mouthed, at theangry automobilist.
“I tell you, it ought to be barred out,” cried the stranger, and hiscompanion agreed with a vigorous nod. “They come pretty near taking awheel off of us. Look at that scratch along the side of our car; willyou?”
“I see it,” admitted Dan, vastly puzzled.
“That maroon car did it,” cried the man. “It ought to be——”
“But say!” blurted out Billy. “That was Mr. Briggs’ car—Mr. Briggs whostarted this endurance test—the man who offers the gold cup!”
“Mr. Raleigh Briggs!” cried the angry man.
“That’s the number of his car—forty-one,” Dan interposed, quickly.
“Well, he ought to be spoken to,” said the man, more mildly. “We weregiving him the right of the road as fast as possible; I never saw a mandrive so recklessly in all my life!”
The angry automobilist was driving on, when Dan said:
“By the way, can you let us have a gallon of juice? We are stalled——”
“Haven’t any to spare!” snapped the man, as he threw on his speed.
“Ha!” ejaculated Billy. “I wish Mr. Briggs had tipped him into theditch!”
“If it was Mr. Briggs,” muttered Dan, but his brother did not hear him.
“What’ll we do?” queried Billy again. “You don’t mean to stay here andbeg of every car you see, do you? They’ll all turn us down.”
“All these cars aren’t driven by such fellows,” growled Dan.
“But say! When Mr. Briggs himself would act so mean——”
“Here’s another!” cried Dan, and this time he leaped into the verycenter of the road, determined to make the coming car slow down, atleast.
When it shot into sight Billy gave a sudden cheer.
“Number fifty-three! Oh, Dannie! that’s Mr. Robert!”
But at that word his brother stepped quickly out of the way. He couldnot hold up Darringford, who had already been so kind to them. But theyoung proprietor of the Darringford Machine Shops began to slow down assoon as he saw that the drab car was in trouble.
“What’s the matter, boys?” he shouted, craning his head out of the carto see them.
“Oh, Mr. Robert!” cried Billy, boldly. “Can you lend us a gallon ofgasoline?”
“What! gone stale between towns?” laughed the young man. “I am surprisedat you, boys.”
“It was not our fault, I assure you,” said Dan, quietly. “Somebodyplayed a trick on us. They filled our cans at Farmingdale with waterinstead of gasoline.”
“Why! that’s a despicable trick,” declared Mr. Robert, as Dan opened oneof the cans and poured the water into the road.
“It has lost us nearly an hour already,” said Billy.
“It shall lose you no more time. Give me that empty can,” said Mr.Robert, quickly. “Take one of our full ones. That’s right. Now, come on,boys, and show me what your Breton-Melville can do!” and, the exchangebeing made, he waved to his chauffeur to go on again.
And the Speedwells were not far behind him. They filled their tank afterdraining out the water. They had to start slowly, and it took themnearly an hour to run the next ten miles. Then they reached a gasolinestation and were very sure that the right fluid was run into their cans.
The Breton-Melville worked like a charmed car after that one accident.On the long grade which they struck about eleven o’clock—the climb overthe mountain range—she acted perfectly. But eighteen miles an hour washer best speed going up.
At the summit (they reached the Tip Top House at three) the boys haltedto overhaul their gear and oil up. They hoped to make Greenbaugh, in thevalley, before the end of their ten mile run; but they were eighty-sevenmiles away. They had traveled already a hundred and forty-two miles fromthe Holly Tree Inn. The trick Chance Avery had played them certainly hadset them back in this day’s running a good many miles!
But several of the early cars to start—the small numbers—had been passedby the Speedwells; as they figured it coming up the mountain there wereonly fifteen cars ahead of them, including number seven.
“And Mr. Briggs’ car,” added Billy. “She must be tearing down themountain already. Hey!” he called to one of the men working around thestables, “has number forty-one passed on? Of course it has! How longago?”
“Number forty-one?” repeated the man, referring to a list of the cars hecarried in his pocket. “No, sir. She ain’t showed up yet.”
“Why, she passed us miles back!” cried Billy, and Dan looked up from hiswork in surprise, too.
“No. She hasn’t come,” said the man, with confidence.
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br /> “Why—why—what does it mean?” gasped the younger Speedwell. “It can’t bepossible that we passed Mr. Briggs anywhere, and missed him.”
“He must be ahead of us,” agreed Dan.
“I know my list is right,” said the man. “I been noting every car that’sin the race. You see how I’ve put a star against those that have got by.Number forty-one ain’t one of ’em.”
“A big maroon car—a Postlethwaite,” suggested Dan.
“No, sir. Ain’t no maroon car gone through. I’m mighty sure of that!”
“Well, what do you know about that?” murmured Billy, staring at hisbrother. “Think that was a delusion back there on the road? Maybe wedidn’t see Mr. Briggs’ car, either?”
“Maybe we didn’t,” replied Dan, gravely. “But I guess that man inthirty-seven wouldn’t agree that it was a delusion that scratched up hispanels.”
“Whew! I should say not.”
At that moment the hostler with the checked list broke in on theirconversation.
“How far did you come to-day?” he asked.
“Hundred and forty miles,” grunted Billy. He wasn’t proud of theirspeed.
“Then you slept at Farmingdale?”
“Yep.”
“Hear about the robbery of the postoffice there before you started?”
“No!” cried Billy. “Last night?”
“Yes. Cleaned it out. Three or four thousand dollars’ worth of stamps,registered mail, and thirteen hundred dollars in cash. Nice little haulfor some band of robbers,” said the hostler.
He went away and Dan and Billy stared at each other for a moment. Billyput his thoughts in words first:
“The maroon car stood in that bridge over the Farmingdale River lastnight, when we came through. No honest car would have hidden there.”
“Where is Mr. Briggs and the real forty-one car?” demanded Dan.
“Oh, Dan! that couldn’t have been him who drove by us so fast thismorning.”
“And scratched number thirty-seven, too,” said Dan.
“It’s the other maroon car,” declared Billy, excitedly. “It’s the bankrobbers.”
“But where is Mr. Briggs?” demanded his brother, again.
“Goodness only knows. Those thieves are onto the fact that their car isthe mate to Mr. Briggs’ auto. It’s plain they are using that fact tohide their tracks.”
“And meanwhile,” repeated Dan, for the third time, “what has happened toMr. Briggs?”
“I give it up!”
“I’m going to find out,” declared Dan. “Here! you ’tend to this. I wantto telephone.”
But when he ran in to the hotel office he found one of the racingtimekeepers there and from him he learned that Mr. Briggs’ car wasreported about fifty miles back on the road. It had suffered abreakdown.
“Are you sure it’s his car?” demanded Dan. “I tell you that there isanother maroon car on the road.”
“Not in the list of racers,” said the timekeeper.
“No, sir. But are you sure it is Mr. Briggs that has broken down?”
“I just spoke to him over the telephone. I know him personally. I knowhis voice.”
“Then there can be no mistake. But I believe that there is anothermaroon car running under Mr. Briggs’ number,” and Dan explained brieflywhat he knew about the car belonging to, or used by, the men who hadrobbed Mr. Sudds and the Farmers’ Bank.
“This robbery of the postoffice at Farmingdale last night,” continuedDan Speedwell, “looks very much like the work of the same crowd, too.Besides, my brother and I are quite sure that these men passed us on theroad this morning. It was not Mr. Briggs in that maroon car, that issure. He would have stopped and spoken to us when he saw that we werestalled.”
“I’ll send your information up and down the line,” promised thetimekeeper. “But there certainly has been no maroon car past here—ineither direction—to-day, or yesterday.”
When Dan got back to the car, Billy already had her cranked up. They ranswiftly out into the highway, reached the down grade, shut off power,and began to coast. For some ten or fifteen miles the map showed thatthe road into the valley was very crooked; they dared not put much powerto their car. And sometimes when she merely coasted, the speedometershowed a forty-five and fifty mile an hour pace!
Eighty-seven miles in an hour and three-quarters—that was the work cutout for them. Half of it was down grade, at least; but it was only whenthey were within twenty miles of the foot of the mountain that theSpeedwells were able to let her out and show just what theBreton-Melville car could do on a gentle slope, and on a good road.
They took that stretch of twenty miles in seventeen minutes!
At the end of that sharp run Billy counted on his fingers and declaredthat there were but eight cars ahead of them.
It was four o’clock when they drove through New Hapsburg at a twelvemile an hour rate. Suddenly they came upon a car around which there wasquite a crowd. It was one of the contesting machines, Dan and Billyknew, and as they shut off their engine they heard several wranglingvoices in the crowd.
“I tell ye I don’t care anything about no race!” cried one harsh voice.“You’re under arrest for exceeding the speed limit through the streetsof this here city.”
“Another Josiah Somes!” chuckled Billy. “What car is it that’s pinched?”
“My goodness, that’s Burton Poole standing up there and waving hispocketbook,” cried Dan.
“Oh, glory!” shouted Billy. “It’s number seven.”
Then they saw Chance Avery. His face was red, and he was too angry forwords. He saw the Breton-Melville car sliding past and he undoubtedlyhad heard Billy’s joyous exclamation. If looks could burst a tire, Danand Billy would have had a bad blow-out right there!
“It won’t hold them long,” said Dan, as their car pulled past the crowd.“Burton will pay the fine and they’ll come after us. Their time isn’tup, it’s likely, before half-past five. They will reach Greenbaugh if wedo.”
“And we’re going to reach it,” acclaimed Billy, cheerfully. “Here’s thetown line, Dannie. Let her go!”