again.
“Please, Clyde, please,” she began now, most artfully, “I
mean that. Really, I do. Won’t you believe me? But I will
next week, sure. Honest, I will. Won’t you believe that? I
meant everything I said when I said it. Honest, I did. I do
like you—a lot. Won’t you believe that, too—please?”
And Clyde, thrilled from head to toe by this latest phase of
her artistry, agreed that he would. And once more he began
to smile and recover his gayety. And by the time they
reached the car, to which they were all called a few minutes
after by Hegglund, because of the time, and he had held
her hand and kissed her often, he was quite convinced that
the dream he had been dreaming was as certain of
fulfillment as anything could be. Oh, the glory of it when it
should come true!
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Chapter 19
FOR the major portion of the return trip to Kansas City,
there was nothing to mar the very agreeable illusion under
which Clyde rested. He sat beside Hortense, who leaned
her head against his shoulder. And although Sparser, who
had waited for the others to step in before taking the wheel,
had squeezed her arm and received an answering and
promising look, Clyde had not seen that.
But the hour being late and the admonitions of Hegglund,
Ratterer and Higby being all for speed, and the mood of
Sparser, because of the looks bestowed upon him by
Hortense, being the gayest and most drunken, it was not
long before the outlying lamps of the environs began to
show. For the car was rushed along the road at break-neck
speed. At one point, however, where one of the eastern
trunk lines approached the city, there was a long and
unexpected and disturbing wait at a grade crossing where
two freight trains met and passed. Farther in, at North
Kansas City, it began to snow, great soft slushy flakes,
feathering down and coating the road surface with a
slippery layer of mud which required more caution than had
been thus far displayed. It was then half past five.
Ordinarily, an additional eight minutes at high speed would
have served to bring the car within a block or two of the
hotel. But now, with another delay near Hannibal Bridge
owing to grade crossing, it was twenty minutes to six before
the bridge was crossed and Wyandotte Street reached. And
already all four of these youths had lost all sense of the
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delight of the trip and the pleasure the companionship of
these girls had given them. For already they were worrying
as to the probability of their reaching the hotel in time. The
smug and martinetish figure of Mr. Squires loomed before
them all.
“Gee, if we don’t do better than this,” observed Ratterer to
Higby, who was nervously fumbling with his watch, “we’re
not goin’ to make it. We’ll hardly have time, as it is, to
change.”
Clyde, hearing him, exclaimed: “Oh, crickets! I wish we
could hurry a little. Gee, I wish now we hadn’t come to-day.
It’ll be tough if we don’t get there on time.”
And Hortense, noting his sudden tenseness and unrest,
added: “Don’t you think you’ll make it all right?”
“Not this way,” he said. But Hegglund, who had been
studying the flaked air outside, a world that seemed dotted
with falling bits of cotton, called: “Eh, dere Willard. We
certainly gotta do better dan dis. It means de razoo for us if
we don’t get dere on time.”
And Higby, for once stirred out of a gambler-like effrontery
and calm, added: “We’ll walk the plank all right unless we
can put up some good yarn. Can’t anybody think of
anything?” As for Clyde, he merely sighed nervously.
And then, as though to torture them the more, an
unexpected crush of vehicles appeared at nearly every
intersection. And Sparser, who was irritated by this
particular predicament, was contemplating with impatience
the warning hand of a traffic policeman, which, at the
intersection of Ninth and Wyandotte, had been raised
against him. “There goes his mit again,” he exclaimed.
“What can I do about that! I might turn over to Washington,
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but I don’t know whether we’ll save any time by going over
there.”
A full minute passed before he was signaled to go forward.
Then swiftly he swung the car to the right and three blocks
over into Washington Street.
But here the conditions were no better. Two heavy lines of
traffic moved in opposite directions. And at each
succeeding corner several precious moments were lost as
the cross-traffic went by. Then the car would tear on to the
next corner, weaving its way in and out as best it could.
At Fifteenth and Washington, Clyde exclaimed to Ratterer:
“How would it do if we got out at Seventeenth and walked
over?”
“You won’t save any time if I can turn over there,” called
Sparser. “I can get over there quicker than you can.”
He crowded the other cars for every inch of available
space. At Sixteenth and Washington, seeing what he
considered a fairly clear block to the left, he turned the car
and tore along that thoroughfare to as far as Wyandotte
once more. Just as he neared the corner and was about to
turn at high speed, swinging in close to the curb to do so, a
little girl of about nine, who was running toward the
crossing, jumped directly in front of the moving machine.
And because there was no opportunity given him to turn
and avoid her, she was struck and dragged a number of
feet before the machine could be halted. At the same time,
there arose piercing screams from at least half a dozen
women, and shouts from as many men who had witnessed
the accident.
Instantly they all rushed toward the child, who had been
thrown under and passed over by the wheels. And Sparser,
looking out and seeing them gathering about the fallen
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figure, was seized with an uninterpretable mental panic
which conjured up the police, jail, his father, the owner of
the car, severe punishment in many forms. And though by
now all the others in the car were up and giving vent to
anguished exclamations such as “Oh, God! He hit a little
girl”; “Oh, gee, he’s killed a kid!”“Oh, mercy!”“Oh, Lord!”“Oh,
heavens, what’ll we do now?” he turned and exclaimed:
“Jesus, the cops! I gotta get outa this with this car.”
And, without consulting the others, who were still half
standing, but almost speechless with fear, he shot the lever
into first, second and then high, and giving the engine all
the gas it would endure, sped with it to the next corner
beyond.
But there, as at the other corners in this vicinity, a
policeman was stationed, and having already seen some
commotion at the corner west of him, had already started to
leave his post in order to ascertain what it was. As he did
so, cries of “Stop that car”—“Stop that car”—reached his
ears. And a man, running toward the sedan from the scene
of the accident, pointed to it, and called: “Stop that car, stop
that car. They’ve killed a child.”
Then gathering what was meant, he turned toward the car,
putting his police whistle to his mouth as he did so. But
Sparser, having by this time heard the cries and seen the
policeman leaving, dashed swiftly past him into
Seventeenth Street, along which he sped at almost forty
miles an hour, grazing the hub of a truck in one instance,
scraping the fender of an automobile in another, and
missing by inches and quarter inches vehicles or
pedestrians, while those behind him in the car were for the
most part sitting bolt upright and tense, their eyes wide,
their hands clenched, their faces and lips set—or, as in the
case of Hortense and Lucille Nickolas and Tina Kogel,
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giving voice to repeated, “Oh, Gods!”“Oh, what’s going to
happen now?”
But the police and those who had started to pursue were
not to be outdone so quickly. Unable to make out the
license plate number and seeing from the first motions of
the car that it had no intention of stopping, the officer blew a
loud and long blast on his police whistle. And the policeman
at the next corner seeing the car speed by and realizing
what it meant, blew on his whistle, then stopped, and
springing on the running board of a passing touring car
ordered it to give chase. And at this, seeing what was
amiss or awind, three other cars, driven by adventurous
spirits, joined in the chase, all honking loudly as they came.
But the Packard had far more speed in it than any of its
pursuers, and although for the first few blocks of the pursuit