His voice was high-pitched and quavering. Something in his manner struck a vague terror to my heart. “Why, Peter, if you care that much I shall be glad to have you go. So will Blackie, I am sure. Come, we’ll go down now. He’ll be waiting for us.” Blackie’s keen, clever mind grasped the situation as soon as he saw us together. His dark face was illumined by one of his rare smiles. “Coming with us, Orme? Do you good. Pile into the tonneau, you two, and hang on to your hair. I’m going to smash the law.” Peter sauntered up to the steering-wheel. “Let me drive,” he said. “I’m not bad at it.” “Nix with the artless amateur,” returned Blackie. “This ain’t no demonstration car. I drive my own little wagon when I go riding, and I intend to until I take my last ride, feet first.” Peter muttered something surly and climbed into the front seat next to Blackie, leaving me to occupy the tonneau in solitary state. Peter began to ask questions—dozens of them, which Blackie answered, patiently and fully. I could not hear all that they said, but I saw that Peter was urging Blackie to greater speed, and that Blackie was explaining that he must first leave the crowded streets behind. Suddenly Peter made a gesture in the direction of the wheel, and said something in a high, sharp voice. Blackie’s answer was quick and decidedly in the negative. The next instant Peter Orme rose in his place and leaning forward and upward, grasped the wheel that was in Blackie’s hands. The car swerved sickeningly. I noticed, dully, that Blackie did not go white as novelists say men do in moments of horror. A dull red flush crept to the very base of his neck. With a twist of his frail body he tried to throw off Peter’s hands. I remember leaning over the back of the seat and trying to pull Peter back as I realized that it was a madman with whom we were dealing. Nothing seemed real. It was ridiculously like the things one sees in the moving picture theaters. I felt no fear. “Sit down, Orme!” Blackie yelled. “You’ll ditch us! Dawn! God!—” We shot down a little hill. Two wheels were lifted from the ground. The machine was poised in the air for a second before it crashed into the ditch and turned over completely, throwing me clear, but burying Blackie and Peter under its weight of steel and wood and whirring wheels. I remember rising from the ground, and sinking back again and rising once more to run forward to where the car lay in the ditch, and tugging at that great frame of steel with crazy, futile fingers. Then I ran screaming down the road toward a man who was tranquilly working in a field nearby. CHAPTER XX. BLACKIE’S VACATION COMES The shabby blue office coat hangs on the hook in the little sporting room where Blackie placed it. No one dreams of moving it. There it dangles, out at elbows, disreputable, its pockets burned from many a hot pipe thrust carelessly into them, its cuffs frayed, its lapels bearing the marks of cigarette, paste-pot and pen.