An orange streak from the car ahead cut off my wonderment. The bullet didn’t come near me—it isn’t easy to shoot accurately from one moving car into another—but at the pace I was going it wouldn’t be long before I was close enough for good shooting.
I turned on the searchlight above the dashboard. It didn’t quite reach the car ahead, but it enabled me to see that the girl was driving, while Kilcourse sat screwed around beside her, facing me. The car was a yellow roadster.
I eased up a little. In a duel with Kilcourse here I would have been at a disadvantage, since I would have had to drive as well as shoot. My best play seemed to be to hold my distance until we reached a town, as we inevitably must. It wasn’t midnight yet. There would be people on the streets of any town, and policemen. Then I could close in with a better chance of coming off on top.
A few miles of this and my prey tumbled to my plan. The yellow roadster slowed down, wavered, and came to rest with its length across the road. Kilcourse and the girl were out immediately and crouching in the road on the far side of their barricade.
I was tempted to dive pell-mell into them, but it was a weak temptation, and when its short life had passed I put on the brakes and stopped. Then I fiddled with my searchlight until it bore full upon the roadster.
A flash came from somewhere near the roadster’s wheels, and the searchlight shook violently, but the glass wasn’t touched. It would be their first target, of course, and …
Crouching in my car, waiting for the bullet that would smash the lense, I took off my shoes and overcoat.
The third bullet ruined the light.
I switched off the other lights, jumped to the road, and when I stopped running I was squatting down against the near side of the yellow roadster. As easy and safe a trick as can be imagined.
The girl and Kilcourse had been looking into the glare of a powerful light. When that light suddenly died, and the weaker ones around it went, too, they were left in pitch unseeing blackness, which must last for the minute or longer that their eyes would need to readjust themselves to the gray-black of the night. My stockinged feet had made no sound on the macadam road, and now there was only a roadster between us; and I knew it and they didn’t.
From near the radiator Kilcourse spoke softly:
“I’m going to try to knock him off from the ditch. Take a shot at him now and then to keep him busy.”
“I can’t see him,” the girl protested.
“Your eyes’ll be all right in a second. Take a shot at the car anyway.”
I moved toward the radiator as the girl’s pistol barked at the empty touring car.
Kilcourse, on hands and knees, was working his way toward the ditch that ran along the south side of the road. I gathered my legs under me, intent upon a spring and a blow with my gun upon the back of his head. I didn’t want to kill him, but I wanted to put him out of the way quick. I’d have the girl to take care of, and she was at least as dangerous as he.
As I tensed for the spring, Kilcourse, guided perhaps by some instinct of the hunted, turned his head and saw me—saw a threatening shadow.
Instead of jumping I fired.
I didn’t look to see whether I had hit him or not. At that range there was little likelihood of missing. I bent double and slipped back to the rear of the roadster, keeping on my side of it.
Then I waited.
The girl did what I would perhaps have done in her place. She didn’t shoot or move toward the place the shot had come from. She thought I had forestalled Kilcourse in using the ditch and that my next play would be to circle around behind her. To offset this, she moved around the rear of the roadster, so that she could ambush me from the side nearest Axford’s car.
Thus it was that she came creeping around the corner and poked her delicately chiseled nose plunk into the muzzle of the gun that I held ready for her.
She gave a little scream.
Women aren’t always reasonable: they are prone to disregard trifles like guns held upon them. So I grabbed her gun hand, which was fortunate for me. As my hand closed around the weapon, she pulled the trigger, catching a chunk of my forefinger between hammer and frame. I twisted the gun out of her hand; released my finger.
But she wasn’t done yet.
With me standing there holding a gun not four inches from her body, she turned and bolted off toward where a clump of trees made a jet-black blot to the north.
When I recovered from my surprise at this amateurish procedure, I stuck both her gun and mine in my pockets, and set out after her, tearing the soles of my feet at every step.
She was trying to get over a wire fence when I caught her.
XVI
“Stop playing, will you?” I said crossly, as I set the fingers of my left hand around her wrist and started to lead her back to the roadster. “This is a serious business. Don’t be so childish!”
“You are hurting my arm.”
I knew I wasn’t hurting her arm, and I knew this girl for the direct cause of four, or perhaps five, deaths; yet I loosened my grip on her wrist until it wasn’t much more than a friendly clasp. She went
