Ferdinand ever ate.

He told me a lot about himself and a lot about his car; how he had been
everything in America, from log-roller in the backwoods to cook in the
Fifth Avenue palaces; how he met Herr Jornek, the designer of the
Modena car, on a trip to St. John's to explore Grand River, and how he
had come back to Europe to drive it in the big race. His luck, he
said, had been out in New York because of a woman; to get far away from
that particular lady was the inducement which carried him to Europe.

Here was something to awaken my curiosity, as you may well imagine, and
I asked him all sorts of questions about the girl; but to no good
purpose. His interest was in the car, one of the first made by the
famous Herr Jornek, and called the Modena after the factory in that
town. He told me it was unlike any car on the market, and that new
features of gearbox, ignition, and engine design would certainly stamp
it a winner if no bad luck overtook him. This persistent talk about
misfortune set me wondering, and I fell to questioning him a little
more closely about his story, and especially that part of it which
concerned the woman.

"Who is the lady, and how did she interfere with you?" I asked. He
would say no more than that he had known her by half a dozen names over
in America, and that she was formerly a dancer at the old Casino
Theatre in New York.

"She's done everything," he said: "gone up in balloons, ridden horses
astride at Maddison Square Gardens, played the cowboys' show with
Buffalo Bill, and sailed an iceboat on the Great Lakes. Whenever she's
out to win I'm out to lose. Make what you like of it, it's Gospel
truth. As certain as I'm up for one of the big prizes of my life, the
girl's there to thwart me. If I were what my schoolmaster used to call
a fatalist, I'd say she was the evil prophetess who used to play ducks
and drakes with the soldier boys at Athens. But I don't believe
anything of the sort--I say it's just sheer bad luck, and that woman
stands for the figure of it."

I was troubled to hear him, and put many more questions. How did the
girl thwart him? Was it just an idea, or had he something better to go
upon? He did not know what to say; I could see it troubled him very
much to speak of it.

"She puts it into my head that I shall lose, and lose I do," he said;
"it's always been the same, and always will be. When I rode that great
leaping horse, Desmond, and put him over the fence