With a creak and a thud the
big car landed, reeled drunkenly, and straightened out in earnest,
Maclaren craned his head to see the speedometer, but had not the heart
to look; he began to curse softly, steadily.
When the muffler went on again and the motor was reduced to a loud,
angry humming, Woodbury caught a few phrases of those solemn
imprecations. He grinned into the black heart of the night, streaked
with lines of grey where therein entered the halo of the headlights, and
then swung the car through an open, iron gate. The motor fell to a
drowsily contented murmur that blended with the cool swishing of the
tires on wet gravel.
"Maclaren," said the other, as he stopped in front of the garage, "if
everyone was as good a passenger as you I'd enjoy motoring; but after
all, a car can't act up like a horse." He concluded gloomily: "There's
no fight in it."
And he started toward the house, but Maclaren, staring after the
departing figure, muttered: "There's only one sort that's worse than a
damn fool, and that's a young one."
It was through a door opening off the veranda that Anthony entered the
house, stealthily as a burglar, and with the same nervous apprehension.
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