Part 53

"Get out," snarled Rupert, his dark face black with scorn, swinging one small arm in a wide gesture. "I ain't had any explanation of what you're doing behind anything except a baby-carriage, and I don't want it. Get out and don't come back. Quick!"

Dazed, Devlin obeyed. Rupert dragged open the motor's hood, busied himself for thirty seconds and crashed the metal cover shut again. As he flung himself into the seat beside the stupefied Corrie, he first caught sight of Gerard standing on the stone portal.

"Better send someone to hold down the yard," he sharply advised. "I ain't going to be there. What?"

Corrie had sufficient presence of tact to send the car forward without pause or comment, not daring to look at his new companion. But he gathered a jumbled view of Gerard's mirthful face and of Devlin standing sulkily at bay before his grinning mates.

When the Mercury Titan returned from its morning's work, it was running with the velvet purr of a happy tiger, the flames from its exhausts shimmered in the violet tints of perfect mixture, and the indicating dial pointed to the fact that Corrie had found some stretch of road where he had passed the hundred mile an hour gait.

"She's in exact shape," approved Gerard, who had come out to meet them. "Good work, Rupert."

Rupert turned a hard dark eye upon him.

"I ain't pining for this," he signified measuredly. "But there's something coming to any decent car, and this one's suffered cruel."

Gerard nodded.

"I have been wondering where I could find a mechanician fit to race with Corrie this season," he confided, nonchalantly serene.

The double bombshell dealt full effect.

"Well, rest yourself," urged Rupert tartly, leaving his seat. "I'll do it. I know I'm a liar, I guess, but that won't hurt my work none."

"Race?" gasped Corrie. "Race? I!"

One rebel vanquished utterly, Gerard surveyed the other, preparing for his first conflict with the new Corrie Rose he had himself created; the Corrie Rose who in his twentieth year was a full-grown man.

"I have had you and the car entered for the Indianapolis meet, next month," he announced; "after that we are going to Georgia, then down to try the sea-beach along the Florida shore, where you can let out all the speed the machine has got. Of course you will race. What else have you been training for?"

Corrie's full red lips closed, his blue eyes braved Gerard's.

"I will not. Gerard, I cannot. To go back as the millionaire amateur of the pink car, to stand the toleration of the professional drivers, who cannot really handle their machines better than I can mine, to know that the story of how you were wrecked is being whispered after me--I'm not big enough to face it all! I might be challenged and sent off the track, for all I know."

"You will not go back as an amateur," Gerard corrected. "You are entered and registered as a professional automobile racer, enrolled on the books of the A.M.A., under their protection and subject to their rules and authority for the future. You will find your certificate of the fact lying on your table. Yes, I did it without consulting you. You signed the necessary papers yourself, without reading them, and you cannot undo this without a formal resignation--unless you contrive to get yourself suspended."

Corrie's fingers gripped the wheel, the varying expressions changing his face like storm-swept water, while the hunger of his gaze besought Gerard.

"You--it's true? Gerard, you've done that for me? They, the A.M.A. officers, they accepted me?"

"Yes. Once for all, there are no whispers connecting you with my accident. That matter is dead. You go back to the racing as a recognized driver in the employ of the Mercury Company, I acting as your manager and Jack Rupert as your mechanician. Do you think it probable that anyone would credit the idea of trouble between us, Corrie?"

"Give me a moment, or I'll lose the only honor I've kept," said Corrie Rose, and turned away his face. "I shall do whatever you bid me, of course."

XIV

VAL DE ROSAS

On the day that Corrie in his American home consented to drive the Mercury Titan through the racing season, Flavia and Mr. Rose arrived at the tiny Spanish village of Val de Rosas--arrived, not so much through design as through the bursting of a tire on their motor car.

"It seems as if the name of the place might be one of our lost titles," observed Mr. Rose idly. "And there is the castle to match, on the hillside. Come stroll through the town, my girl, while Lenoir repairs damages."

Smiling, Flavia stepped down beside him, throwing back her silk veils and lifting her fair, almost too delicate face to the Andalusian sunshine. After her stepped a great dog, with the sedate, matter-of-course bearing of a constant attendant.

"I wonder who lives in the castle," she responded to his mood of playfulness. "Our castle. We should dispossess them."