hing wind and scattering pebbles.

"I asked you into this car," he shouted, "because I meant to keep you
in it until I had you where you couldn't do any mischief. I told you
I'd give you something better than the Journal would give you, and I am
going to give you a happy day in the country. We're now on our way to
this lady's house. You are my guest, and you can play golf, and
bridge, and the piano, and eat and drink until the polls close, and
after that you can go to the devil. If you jump out at this speed, you
will break your neck. And, if I have to slow up for anything, and you
try to get away, I'll go after you--it doesn't matter where it is--and
break every bone in your body."

"Yah! you can't!" shrieked Mr. Schwab. "You can't do it!" The madness
of the flying engines had got upon his nerves. Their poison was
surging in his veins. He knew he had only to touch his elbow against
the elbow of Winthrop, and he could throw the three of them into
eternity. He was travelling on air, uplifted, defiant, carried beyond
himself.

"I can't do what?" asked Winthrop.

The words reached Schwab from an immeasurable distance, as from another
planet, a calm, humdrum planet on which events moved in commonplace,
orderly array. Without a jar, with no transition stage, instead of
hurtling through space, Mr. Schwab found himself luxuriously seated in
a cushioned chair, motionless, at the side of a steep bank. For a mile
before him stretched an empty road. And, beside him in the car, with
arms folded calmly on the wheel there glared at him a grim, alert young
man.

"I can't do what?" growled the young man.

A feeling of great loneliness fell upon "Izzy" Schwab. Where were now
those officers, who in the police courts were at his beck and call?
Where the numbered houses, the passing surface cars, the sweating
multitudes of Eighth Avenue? In all the world he was alone, alone on
an empty country road, with a grim, alert young man.

"When I asked you how you knew my name," said the young man, "I thought
you knew me as having won some races in Florida last winter. This is
the car that won. I thought maybe you might have heard of me when I
was captain of a football team at--a university. If you have any idea
that you can jump from this car and not be killed, or, that I cannot
pound you into a pulp, let me prove to you you're wrong--now. We're
quite alone. Do you wish to get down?"

"No," shrieked Schwab, "I won't!"