son why! He'd bet he could drive one as well
as Cliff Lowell too, once he had the feel of the thing.

"Too fast for you?" Cliff asked once, and Johnny felt the little
tolerant smile he could not see.

"Too fast? Say, I'm used to _flying_!" Johnny shouted back, ready to
die rather than own the tingling of his scalp for fear. He expected
Cliff to let her out still more, after that tacit dare, but Cliff did
not for two reasons: he was already going as fast as he could and keep
the road, and he was convinced that Johnny Jewel had hardened every
nerve in his system with skyriding.

Oceanside was but a sprinkle of lights and a blur of houses when they
slipped through at slackened speed, lest their passing be noted
curiously and remembered too well. On again, over the upland and down
once more to the very sand where the waves rocked and boomed under the
stars. Up and around and over and down--Johnny wondered how much
farther they would hurl themselves through the night. Straight out
along a narrow streak of asphalt toward lights twinkling on a blur of
hillside. Up and around with a skidding turn to the right, and Del Mar
was behind them. Down and around and along another straight line next
the sands, and up a steep grade whose windings slowed even this brute
of a car to a saner pace.

"This is Torrey Pine grade," Cliff informed him. "It isn't much
farther to the next stop. I've been making time, because from San
Diego on we have rougher going. This is not the most direct route we
could have taken, but it's the best, seeing I have to stop in San Diego
and complete certain arrangements. And then, too, it is not always
wise to take a direct route to one's destination. Not--always." He
slowed for a rickety bridge and added negligently, "We've made pretty
fair time."

"I'd say we have. You've been doing fifty part of the time."

"And part of the time I haven't. From here on it's rough."

From there on it was that, and more. There had been a rain storm which
the asphalt had long forgotten but the dirt road recorded with ruts and
chuck-holes half filled with mud. The big car weathered it without
breaking a spring, and before the tiredest laborer of San Diego had
yawned and declared it was bedtime, they chuckled sedately into San
Diego and stopped on a side street where a dingy garage stood open to
the greasy sidewalk.

Cliff turned in there and whistled. A lean figure in grease-blackened
coveralls came ou