ut of the tiny window set in the back. The big car in the
road behind, obscured in the dust that must help to blind its driver,
had lost scarcely more than half a block in picking up its speed.

It, too, was a powerful machine, and its coughing, open exhaust was
adding to the din on the highway. It was trailing smoke in a dense,
bluish cloud that meant they were burning up their lubricant with
spendthrift prodigality. But the monster was running superbly.

The houses seemed scooting by in madness. A team that stood beside the
road dwindled swiftly in perspective. The whir of the gears and the
furious discharge of the used-up gas seemed increasing momentarily.
The whole machine was rocking as it sped, yet the big red pursuer was
apparently gaining by degrees.

Garrison nodded in acknowledgment of the fact that the car behind, with
almost no tonneau and minus the heavy covered superstructure, offered
less resistance to the wind. With everything else made equal, and
accident barred, the fellow at the wheel behind would overhaul them yet.

He looked out forward. The road was straight for at least a mile. He
beheld a bicycle policeman, riding ahead, to develop his speed, with
the certain intention of calling to his driver to stop.

Half a minute later the car was abreast the man on the wheel, who
shrieked out his orders on the wind. Garrison leaned to the tube that
ended by the chauffeur's ear.

"Go on--give her more if she's got it!" he said. "I'll take care of
the fines!"

The driver had two notches remaining on his spark advance. He thumbed
the lever forward, and the car responded with a trifle more of speed.
It was straining every bolt and nut to its utmost capacity of strength.

The bicycle officer, clinging half a minute to a hope made forlorn by
his sheer human lack of endurance, drifted to rearward with the dust.

Once more Garrison peered out behind. The big red demon, tearing down
the road, was warming to its work. With cylinders heating, and her
mixture therefore going snappily as a natural result, she too had taken
on a slight accession of speed. Two meteors, flung from space across
the earth's rotundity, could scarcely have been more exciting than
these liberated chariots of power.

There was no time to talk; there was scarcely time to think. The road,
the landscape, the very world, became a dizzying blur that destroyed
all distinct sense of sight. In the rush of the air, and the
rapid