"Aw, step on her, Jack! Show some class, boy--show some class! Good old boat! If you're too stewed to drive 'er, _e_ knows the way home. Say, Jackie, if this old car could talk, wouldn't momma get an ear-full on Monday, hey? What if she--" "Cut it _out_--or I'll throw you out!" came back over Jack's shirt-clad shoulder. He at least had the wit to use what little sense he had in driving the car, and he had plenty of reason to believe that he could carry out his threat, even if the boulevard did heave itself up at him like the writhings of a great snake. If his head was not fit for the job, his trained muscles would still drive with automatic precision. Only his vision was clouded; not the mechanical skill necessary to pilot his mother's big car safely into the garage. Whim held the five in the rear seats absorbed in their own maudlin comicalities. The fellow beside Jack did not seem to take any interest in his surroundings, and the five gave the front seat no further attention. Jack drove circumspectly, leaning a little forward, his bare arms laid up across the wheel and grasping the top of it. Brown as bronze, those arms, as were his face and neck and chest down to where the open V of his sport shirt was held closed with the loose knot of a crimson tie that whipped his shoulder as he drove. A fine looking fellow he was, sitting there like the incarnation of strength and youth and fullblooded optimism. It was a pity that he was drunk--he would have been a perfect specimen of young manhood, else. The young man on the front seat beside him turned suddenly on those behind. The lower half of his face was covered with a black muffler. He had a gun, and he "cut down" on the group with disconcerting realism. "Hands up!" he intoned fearsomely. "I am the mysterious lone bandit of the boulevards. Your jewels are the price of your lives!" The six-shooter wavered, looking bleakly at one and then another. After the first stunned interval, a shout of laughter went up from those behind. "Good! Good idea!" one approved. And another, having some familiarity with the mechanics of screen melodrama, shouted, "Camera!" "Lone bandit nothing! We're _all_ mysterious auto bandits out seeking whom we may devour!" cried a young man with a naturally attractive face and beautiful teeth, hastily folding his handkerchief cornerwise for a mask, and tying it behind his head--to the great discomfort of his neighbors, who complained bitterly at having their eyes jabbed out with his elbows.