back to the blazing
car. Again there was an indefinable peculiarity about the manner of
the man's surrender.

"It is conventional, Monsieur," said Carl evenly, "to betray interest
and concern in the wreck of one's property. _Voila_! I have
effectively completed what you had begun. If I am not indifferent,
surely one may with reason look for a glimmer of concern from you."

Shrugging, the man stared sullenly at the car, a hopeless torch now
suffusing the lonely road with light. There was a certain suggestion
of racial subtlety in the careful immobility of his face, but his dark,
inscrutable eyes were blazing dangerously.

Carl's careless air of interest altered indefinably. Inspecting his
chafing prisoner now with narrowed, speculative eyes which glinted
keenly, he fell presently to whistling softly, laughed and with
tantalizing abruptness fell silent again. Immobile and subtle now as
his silent companion, he stared curiously at the other's fastidiously
pointed beard, at the dark eyes and tightly compressed lips, and
impudently proffered his cigarettes. They were impatiently declined.

"Monsieur is pleased," said Carl easily, "to reveal many marked
peculiarities of manner, owing to the unbalancing fact, I take it, that
his mind is relentlessly pursuing one channel. Monsieur," went on
Carl, lazily lighting his own cigarette and staring into his
companion's face with a look of level-eyed interest, "Monsieur has been
praying ardently for--opportunities, is it not so? 'I will humor this
mad fool who motors about in the rain like an operatic comet!' says
Monsieur inwardly, 'for I am, of course, a stranger to him. Then,
without arousing undue interest, I may presently escape into the storm
whence I came--er--driving atrociously.'"

The man stared.

"Monsieur," purred Carl audaciously, "is doubtless more interested
in--let us say--camp fires for instance, than such a vulgar blaze as
yonder car."

"One is powerless," returned the other haughtily, "to answer riddles."

Carl bowed with curiously graceful insolence.

"As if one could even hope to break such splendid nerve as that!" he
murmured appreciatively. "It is an impassiveness that comes only with
training. Monsieur," he added imperturbably, "I have had the
pleasure--of seeing you before."

"It is possible!" shrugged the other politely.

"Under strikingly different conditions!" pursued Carl reminiscently.
There was a disappointing lack of interest i