Part 29

So, since she was not to give Corrie his morning coffee, she would not give Gerard's to him or see him until his return from the race course. As a matter of course, it was not to be contemplated that she should rise at dawn for a tête-à-tête breakfast with the guest, at this period when all the fine elements that composed their relation hesitated at the point of crystallization. But she scarcely regretted the postponed interview. It would be better to meet each other differently, at more leisure. He would come again to the fountain arcade, where she watched for Corrie's return.

When Flavia reached her own room, there stood on her dressing-table a long silver-paper and filigree box. Wondering, she raised the lid, to be met with a gust of exquisite perfume and confronted with a mass of frail yellow roses, lovely with the quaint, virginal beauty of suggestion that separates them from all their other-colored kin. Across the glistening petals lay a cover cut from a pocket dictionary, bearing written upon it one sentence: "Definition of the meaning of Flavia Rose."

She laid her head beside the flowers, gold upon gold. She, also, the fancy came to her, had placed this day in the vase of Al-Mansor. But the day to come outshone it, as a rosy pearl one merely white.

"To-morrow," she whispered to herself. "To-morrow."

WRECK

Gray, sluggish, slow in coming and sullen of aspect, a reluctant dawn succeeded the night. A wet mist clung everywhere in the windless atmosphere, muffling sound as well as light. There was not even a servant stirring in the Rose house, when Gerard descended the dark stairs and went out into the chill, damp park.

In the garage one bright point shone out; under a swinging electric lamp Rupert was preparing his machine to go out, a solitary figure in the expanse of wavering shadows and dim bulks.

"Where are Rose and his man?" Gerard questioned, as he came across the floor.

His voice rolled startlingly loud in the lofty, echoing room. Moving to reply, the mechanician let fall a tool and the crash repeated itself sharply from every stone arch and angle.

"Rose won't be out at the course till late; I guess our peaceful life ain't what he's used to, exactly. He 'phoned over last night to Dean, who's sleeping yet."

Gerard nodded, eyeing the Mercury racer with affectionate attention.

"All right, is she?" he asked.

Rupert straightened himself and proceeded to close the hood.

"I ain't supposing we'll need to be towed," he conceded sarcastically. "But I'll put in a rope, if you're worried bad, and take my copy of Motor Repairing at a Glance."

"Do," Gerard urged. "I'd like to have it found on you, Rupert. Start her up, then, if you're ready."

He crossed, with the last word, to the shelf where lay his racing mask and gauntlets. The melancholy drip from moist eaves and trees, the dreary half-light and heavy air had absolutely no depressing power upon his flawless nerves and vigor of life. By the open door he paused to look out, unconsciously clasping his hands behind his head with the leisurely grace and relaxation of one who found pleasure in mere movement.

"There'll be a wet course," Rupert's muffled tones came from the opposite end of the room.

"Well?" Gerard queried lazily. "What of it?"

There was no answer. Instead sounded the click of moving throttle and spark, and the place burst into thunderous tumult; violet flames darted from the exhausts and enfolded the hood of the vibrating car as it moved forward to its master's side.

"I don't like this morning, and I don't like this course," stated Rupert, sombrely definite, through the roar and rattle of irregular reports from the cut-down motor. "But I guess I've got to stand for them. Anyhow, I couldn't have a classier Friday-the-thirteenth emotion equipment if I had been to a voodoo fortune teller who had a grudge against me. What are we waiting for?"

Gerard lingered in taking his seat, his amazed eyes travelling over the small, discontented dark face of his companion.

"Something's wrong, Rupert?"

"I ain't saying so--yet."

The driver's own expression shadowed slightly; he looked again and more searchingly at the other. In common with most men who had lived in the tense atmosphere of the most dangerous form of racing yet evolved, he had witnessed more than one case where a presentiment did not fail of fulfilment. Irrespective of whether catalogued as coincidence, occult foresight or absurdity, the facts did exist, occasionally to be read in the prosaic columns of a newspaper, more often lost except in camp annals. He knew, and Rupert knew, of a mechanician who suddenly refused absolutely to go out with the driver by whose side he had ridden countless miles, having no better reason than a disinclination for the trip. And they both had seen the substitute who took his place brought in dead, an hour later, after his car's wreck. A widely-known victor of many races, one of Gerard's close friends, had come to shake hands with him in a state of causeless nervousness that would have shamed a novice, just before starting on the ride from which he never returned. The price of debate is too high to argue with some things; Gerard temporized.

"I don't want to take you out feeling like that. Give yourself a day off," he suggested. "I'll find one of the factory men to go out with me for the morning's practice."

"Who's crazy now?" inquired his mechanician acidly, and flung himself back in his narrow seat.

The Mercury slipped through Mr. Rose's winding drives, plunged into the sandy Long Island road, and sped lurching toward the course.

There was nothing dull or depressing about the starting point, at the Motor Parkway. Before the busy row of repair pits throbbed and panted some of the cars, surrounded by their force of workers; in other camps the men stood, watch in hand, timing the machines already out. Reporters vibrated everywhere; surrounded by an admiring group, two world-famous French and Italian drivers were pitching pennies for the last cigarettes from a box of special brand. Only the tiers of empty seats in the grand-stand and the absence of spectators in fields and parking-spaces distinguished this practice morning from the actual race.