The Perils of Pauline Part 6

He was barely in time to unlock the door and be found busily working on the car when Pauline entered. She had just learned of the chauffeur's absence. Harry volunteered the additional bad news that the big car was out of order. Like every disappointed woman, she insisted on knowing exactly what was wrong. Harry told her, with many long technical details, and, not knowing at all what he was talking about, she had to be satisfied.

Could he fix it in time to get her to the aviation field before the race?

Well, that depended partly on whether she would go away and not bother him until breakfast.

Pauline could, and she certainly would refrain from bothering him.

Never before had Harry found her a bother, nor, for that matter, had any other man in her recollection. Out she went, with more color than usual in her pink cheeks and the light of battle in her eyes.

"By George, I've got to play my cards carefully," thought Harry, as he contemplated the runabout. It was evident that he had designs on the health of the two-seater also. But he felt the necessity of subtlety in this case. He could not a.s.sa.s.sinate it boldly by tearing out a vital organ as he had done to the bigger car. This runabout must die a slow, lingering death. How was he to do it? His first idea was to weaken the tires and invite "blowouts" on the road. But this could not be done with certainty, and some kind friend might supply him with new tires.

A more promising idea was to drain the engine of its oil, knowing that sooner or later the pistons would run dry and stick. Such a proceeding would ruin the engine, and Harry was too good a mechanic to spoil a first rate engine, especially one built by his father. He would as soon think of hamstringing a faithful horse. A better plan soon came to him and put him into action. It soon had him flat on his back under the car, boring a hole in the bottom of the gasoline tank. When the life-blood of the car began to trickle out in a stream he stopped the hole with a small wooden peg.

The young man now frowned at the only remaining vehicle which had, not received his attention, Owen's motorcycle.

Harry went to the hose used for washing down the cards and collected a little water in the palm of his hand. With the other hand he removed the cap from the motorcycle's tank and allowed two or three drops of water to mingle with the gasoline.

This done, Harry let down his sleeves, washed his hands, and sauntered in to breakfast, with the unwelcome announcement that the big car was, for the day at least, beyond human aid.

There was a flicker of suspicion in Owen's sallow face at the news. He wondered if Harry had disabled the touring car that he might ride alone with Pauline.

"I am afraid," said Harry, quietly, "that you will have to ride in the runabout alone with me, Polly. It's rather hard on Raymond, but I guess he must go on his motorcycle or by train."

"Oh, I think you wrecked it on purpose," said Pauline, without the slightest suspicion that she was stating the truth.

Owen, worried by vague misgivings about Harry, looked into the tank of the runabout to make sure that it was full, and then scurried away on his two wheeled mount. He considered waiting until the runabout was ready to start and keeping the machine in sight, but it seemed wiser to be on the field where he could make sure the Frenchman would not forget his bargain nor start before Pauline arrived.

Pauline was ready with such record-breaking suddenness that it gave her the novel experience of waiting for Harry.

She bad not forgotten that her lover had asked her not to bother him while he worked on the car. After that slight to her pride the young lady would rather die than go near the garage while he was in it.

During the next five minutes unpleasant doubts entered her mind. What could this indifference and neglect mean? She had looked upon Harry ever since his return from college as a personal possession. Of course, technically he wasn't hers until she married him. But if he were not her property, at least she had an option on the handsome youth until such time as she saw fit to either take his name or relinquish him to some one else. In that case she wondered to whom she would like to turn him over. There was her schoolmate and chum, Miss Hamlin. How lucky any man would be to get her, and Harry--how would he feel about it? Then, like a cold draught in her brain came the recollection that Lucille and Harry had corresponded all the four years he was at college.

Could it be that she, Pauline, had been too willful and headstrong with Harry? If so, was it possible that the keen edge of his adoration was wearing dull? Pauline had just succeeded in stamping these unpleasant questions deep down into the subconscious parts of her mind when the young man whisked up in the runabout.

Pauline's wrath melted rapidly. Harry drove, as he did everything out in the open air, magnificently. His judgment of distances and openings was precise, and his skill in weaving his way through heavy traffic was startling. A good looking young man is seldom seen to better advantage, especially by a girl, than when driving a powerful car.

Pauline loved to drive with Harry. Besides his spectacular tricks he had a guileless manner of getting the better of arguments with crossing policemen.

Harry was not driving as fast as usual. This fact was impressed on her by shouts and waving of hands from a car which pa.s.sed them from behind.

"That's Lucille," cried Pauline, waving.

"Yes, and, confound it, that's Billy Madison taking her to the races."

"Well, why shouldn't he?" asked Pauline. "Isn't it all right?"

"Yes but it seems to me he is paying deal of attention to Lucille and --say, Polly, you don't suppose she'd be silly enough to care for him, do, you?"

That sensation of a cold wave in the back of her brain came again.

"I'm sure I don't know," she replied, a little coldly. "Why--does it matter very much to you?"

Harry hesitated, even stammered a little, in denying that it did. He stammered, as Pauline well understood, because he was not telling her his true thoughts. It did matter, and she knew it. In reality it mattered because Harry knew too much about young Madison to want him to win the affection of any friend of his, but Harry did not wish to explain.

"So Harry does care for Lucille and always has cared," thought Pauline. The sense of possession of the youth beside her faded and he seemed far away. If a man fears he is losing his grip on a girl he redoubles his attentions and racks his brains to be more interesting and attractive to her. A girl in the same situation reverses the tactics.

Just as Harry felt the absolute zero which scientists talk about settling upon him, he remembered a very important duty.

"Seems to me we don't drift the way we ought to," said Harry, pressing on his clutch pedal and trying to took concerned.

"I think we have been a long time getting to the aviation field," was Pauline's chilly answer.

Harry stopped the car, went back and pulled out the little wooden plug in the gasoline tank. Then away they went again, leaving a little wet line in the dust of the road. Pauline stared straight ahead. Harry's attempts at conversation fell on the stony ground of silence, or at best brought forth only the briefest and most colorless answers. Soon Harry's practiced ear caught the preliminary warning of waning gasoline, and a moment later, half way up a gentle hill, with a sob from all its six cylinders the car gave up the ghost.

A few miles ahead Owen also was in difficulties. He had been sailing along merrily until he stopped at a little roadhouse for a drink. The machine had been all right when he got off and he knew n.o.body had touched it, yet now it acted as if possessed by the evil one. With great difficulty he was able to start it, and once started it coughed, bucked and showed all the symptoms of bronchitis and pneumonia. By dint of strenuous pedaling Owen helped the asthmatic motor to the top of the next hill. It ran as smoothly as a watch all the way down the other side and then imitated a bunch of cannon crackers on the following rise.

Owen was a good motorcycle rider, but a very poor mechanic. His machine had been adjusted, cleaned and kept in repair by the Marvin chauffeur, and the secretary had seldom, cause to investigate it on the road. He had always used the carefully filtered gasoline from the garage, so that he neither understood the present alarming symptoms nor knew their simple cure. His motor was protesting at a drop of water which had entered the needle valve of his carburetor and, being heavier than gasoline, had lodged there and stopped its flow. It would have been an easy, matter to drain the carburetor, but instead Owen with nervous fingers adjusted everything he could get his hands on, and after two hours' work trundled it into a farmhouse and hired the farmer to drive him the short remaining distance to the aviation field.

Several machines were in the air, but not the Frenchman's, when the farmer drove up. The roads and the edges of the field were alive with cars and spectators as the secretary hastened to the "hangars." The French aviator welcomed Owen and inquired for the mademoiselle. This confirmed Owen's fears that something had happened to her on the way.

It had troubled him a little that the runabout had not pa.s.sed him on the road, but Harry might have made a detour to avoid some section of bad road.

Owen lost another hour in watching and worrying before he made up his mind to go to the rescue. There were plenty of idle cars, but it was not easy to hire one, as they were mostly guarded by chauffeurs with no right to rent or lend them. At last a man was found who was willing to pick up $10 and take a chance that his master would not know about it.

The rescue car found them just where they had stopped, half way up the hill. Pauline had run the scale of feminine annoyance, from silence to sarcasm, to tears. The tears produced almost the same effect on Harry's determination to keep Pauline from flying that the drops of water had in Owen's carburetor. The spectacle of the girl he loved weeping had almost broken up his resolve when Owen dashed by, shouted, turned around and drew up alongside.

Harry asked for help, and the chauffeur who had never had the pleasure of tinkering with a "Marvin Six," was inclined to dismount and aid at least in diagnosing the car's ailment. While he was thinking about it and surveying the parts which Harry had taken out and strewn about the running board in his pretended trouble hunt Pauline had dashed away her tears and transferred her pretty self to the new car. Pauline and Owen both knew there was barely time to reach the field before the Frenchman's ascent. So with scanty farewells Harry was left to rea.s.semble his car. When he had set up the last nut he replaced the little plug in the tank, produced a can of gasoline from the locker behind the seats, emptied it into his tank and drove at reckless speed for the aviation grounds.

He was just in time to see a tiny speck on the edge of the horizon.

This, he learned, was the Frenchman's machine. He was told that it carried a pa.s.senger. The speck grew rapidly in size, developed the insect shape of a biplane and soon seemed to be over the other end of the aviation field. The young man's joy at seeing the aeroplane returning in safety was dampened by a little feeling of shame that by such devious means he had almost spoiled Pauline's pleasure.

"I act like an old woman worrying Polly this way," he decided. "No wonder she is cross to me lately. She must think I would be a tyrant of a--"

Harry's last words were choked by a spasm of the throat.

There were shouts and gestures from the spectators.

A light gust of wind had struck the aeroplane on the right wing. It wavered an instant, like a dragon fly about to alight, and then instead of responding to the aviator's levers turned on its left side and plunged to the ground. A cloud of dust arose, half hiding the wreck, and then the crash of impact came to his ears.

There was a second of silence, broken by a groan. Harry heard the groan and didn't even know it came from his own throat. He was in motion now, forcing people to the right and left and running down the field. It seemed miles to the other end, and he was gratefully conscious that others nearer were hurrying to the rescue, if rescue it might be called.

The aeroplane had dropped like a stone from a height that forbade hope of escape. Would she be conscious and would he be in time to give and receive a last message of love before her splendid young life was quenched in the black blot of death? Besides grief there was fury in the runner's heart, wrath against Owen for encouraging this foolish and dangerous caprice, against the unfortunate driver who had failed to preserve his precious freight, and against nature who condemns every living thing by one means or another to that same final failure and wreck death.

Gasping for breath from his exertions, he was at last within a hundred feet of the ruin, and saw people lifting up the engine and removing a limp figure. Just then two people stepped in his way. He did not turn out but rushed straight at them, rather glad to have something to burl aside in his blind anger, nor did he notice that one was a woman.

Harry's plunge carried him between them and knocked both down, just as he had often bowled over the "interference" in his football games. On he lurched, wondering vaguely at hearing his name called. He heard it again and it sounded like Pauline's voice.

He turned, and it was Pauline.

After all Pauline had arrived too late--had missed that fatal adventure.

Owen watched Harry lift Pauline up and wrap her in his arms with a squeeze that hurt. But it was a hurt she loved and though she sobbed as if her heart would break they were sobs of relief and happiness.