nture.

"Oh, Mr. Storm!" exclaimed Miss Moore when I added myself to the rank of
recruits. Everybody stared at me. I felt I was not liked. "You see I've
br-roken down!" she explained with the smile of a child. "The poor car
won't move without ter-r-rible danger, and no one can find out what the
mystery is--though they're _so good_ to me!"

Perhaps she wildly hoped there might be a bond between the man of
mystery and all other mysteries. It didn't seem likely that where so
many men had failed I should succeed; still, I'd driven a Grayles-Grice
(you remember, don't you?) and perhaps they hadn't.

"I suppose you don't know things about cars?" she questioned anxiously,
as I drew nearer.

"I know some things," I admitted with due modesty. And suddenly I wanted
to succeed where these others had failed. Because, though I had done
some small favours for her, she hadn't known about them, so she had
never thanked me except in the most casual way. I thought it would be
rather nice to be thanked by her. I gazed at the Grayles-Grice, which
also gazed at me from under her bonnet, and seemed to wink with her
carburetor.

"How do you know she won't move?" I inquired of every one in general and
no one in particular.

"The young lady begged us not to try, as it had been tried already by
two gentlemen on motor bikes, who had to go on before this lot came,"
the school teachers' chauffeur defended the crowd's intelligence and his
own. "I thought it might be a ball broken in the bearings had jammed a
rear wheel, but it ain't that; so we took a squint at the differential,
but it ain't that either."

"Shall we try again to give her a shove?" I suggested. "The traffic
can't be held up here all night. Pretty soon it will be solid between
here and New York."

"Oh, _don't_ try till you find out what's the matter!" cried Miss Moore.
"There was the most hor-r-r-rible noise when those two other men tried.
We might be killed!"

I made her get down, and then, with a couple of bold volunteers, risked
the mystic peril that lurked behind the "hor-r-rible noise," by
attempting to push the car to the edge of the road.

If you will believe me, the Grayles-Grice rolled silently and smoothly
as if she were on skates. In a moment she was out of the way, and the
coast clear for the crowd. But no man near enough to have seen Miss
Moore stirred until I had made a further discovery. The deep-rooted
trouble which had defied the gray matter of all explor