"I forgot to tell you." Which Johnny felt was a lie, because Cliff
Lowell did not strike him as the kind of man who forgot things. "Yes,
I keep two. This is good for long trips when I want to take
luggage--and so on." His tone did not invite further conversation. He
seemed absorbed now in his driving; and his driving, Johnny decided,
was enough to absorb any man. Yard by yard he was sending the
big-nosed car faster ahead, until the pointer on the speedometer seemed
to want to rest on 35. Still, they did not seem to be going so very
fast, except that they overhauled and passed everything else on the
road, and not once did a car overhaul and pass them. Cliff glanced
often into the mirror, watching the road behind them for the single
speeding light of a motor cop--because Los Angeles County, as you are
probably aware, does not favor thirty-five miles an hour for
automobiles, but has fixed upon twenty-five as a safe and sane speed at
which the general public may travel.
But Cliff was wary, chance favored them with fairly clear roads, and
the miles slid swiftly behind. They ate at San Juan Capistrano not
much past the hour which Johnny had all his life thought of as supper
time. Cliff filled the gas tank, gave the motor a pint of oil and the
radiator about a quart of water, turned up a few grease cups and
applied the nose of the oil can here and there to certain bearings. He
did it all with the fastidious air of a prince democratically inclined
to look after things himself, the air which permeated his whole
personality and made Johnny continue calling him Mr. Lowell, in spite
of a life-long habit of applying nicknames even to chance acquaintances.
Cliff climbed in and settled himself. "We want to make it in time to
get some hunting at daylight," he observed in a tone which included the
fellow at the service station who was just pocketing his money for the
gas and oil. "I think we can, with luck."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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