n arm shot around Patsy
and held her tight; the man was strong enough to keep her where he
wished her and steer the car down a straight, empty road. "Remember,
I can prove you asked me to take you--and it was your choice--this
nice, quiet spin!"

She sat so still, so relaxed under his grip that unconsciously he
relaxed too; she could feel the gradual loosening of joint and
muscle.

"Why didn't you scream?" he sneered at length.

"I'm keeping my breath--till there's need of it."

Silence followed. The car raced on down the persistently empty road;
the few houses they passed might have been tenantless for any signs
of human life about them. In the far distance Patsy could see a
suspension-bridge, and she wished and wished it might be closed for
repairs--something, anything to bring to an end this hideous,
nightmarish ride. She groaned inwardly at the thought of it all.
She--Patricia O'Connell--who would have starved rather than play
cheap, sordid melodrama--had been tricked by chance into becoming an
actual, living part of one. She wondered a little why she felt no
fear--she certainly had nothing but distrust and loathing for the man
beside her--and these are breeders of fear. Perhaps her anger had
crowded out all other possible emotion; perhaps--back of
everything--she still hoped for the ultimate spark of decency and
good in him.

Her silence and apparent apathy puzzled the man. "Well, what's in
your mind?" he snapped.

"Two things: I was thinking what a pity it was you let your father
throw so much filth in your eyes, that you grew up to see everything
about you smirched and ugly; and I was wondering how you ever came to
have a friend like Gregory Jessup and a fancy for white roses."

"What in thunder are you talking--"

But he never finished. The scream he had looked for came when he had
given up expecting it. Patsy had wrenched herself free from his hold
and was leaning over the wind-shield, beckoning frantically to a
figure mounted on one of the girders of the bridge. It was a
grotesque, vagabond figure in rags, a battered cap on the back of its
head.

"Good God!" muttered the man in the car, stiffening.

Luckily for the tinker the car was running again at a moderate speed;
the man had slowed up when he saw the rough planking over the bridge,
and his hand had not time enough to reach the lever when the tinker
was upon him. The car came to an abrupt stop.

Patsy sank back on the seat, white and trembl