d his length quietly. The gears were grinding, the driver
bent low over his wheel. Very deliberately, now that he knew what he
was going to do, Nikky unbuttoned his tunic and slipped it off. It was a
rash thing, this plan he had in mind, rash under any circumstances, in
a moving car particularly rash here, where between the cliff and a
precipice that fell far away below, was only a winding ribbon of uneven
road.

Here, at the crucial moment, undoubtedly he should have given a last
thought to Hedwig. But alas for romance! As a matter of honesty, he
had completely forgotten Hedwig. This was his work, and with even the
hottest of lovers, work and love are things apart.

So he waited his moment, loveless, as one may say, and then, with one
singularly efficient gesture, he flung his tunic over the chauffeur's
head. He drove a car himself, did Nikky--not his own, of course; he was
far too poor--and he counted on one thing: an automobile driver acts
from the spinal cord, and not from the brain. Therefore his brain may
be seething with a thousand frenzies, but he will shove out clutch and
brake feet in an emergency, and hold them out.

So it happened. The man's hands left the wheel, but he stopped his
car. Not too soon. Not before it had struck the cliff, and then taken a
sickening curve out toward the edge of the precipice. But stop it did,
on the very edge of eternity, and the chauffeur held it there.

"Set the hand brake!" Nikky said. The lamps were near enough the edge to
make him dizzy.

The chauffeur ceased struggling, and set the hand brake. His head
was still covered. But having done that, he commenced a struggle more
furious than forceful, for both of them were handicapped. But Nikky had
steel-like young arms from which escape was impossible.

And now Nikky was forced to an unsoldier-like thing that he afterward
tried to forget. For the driver developed unexpected strength, refused
to submit, got the tunic off his head, and, seeing himself attacked by
one man only, took courage and fell to. He picked up a wrench from the
seat beside him, and made a furious pass at Nikky's head. Nikky ducked
and, after a struggle, secured the weapon. All this in the car, over the
seat back.

It was then that Nikky raised the wrench and stunned his man with it. It
was hateful. The very dull thud of it was sickening. And there was a bad
minute or two when he thought he had killed his opponent. The man had
sunk down in his seat, a