Page:Arthur Stranger--The Stranger.djvu/8

4 the grey-faced stranger was without cape or hat. His brow, in fact, wore a slight frown of perplexity as he continued to brush a sprinkling of dust from his clothing of faded broadcloth.

John Hardy gulped with gratitude. He hadn't killed the man, at any rate, whatever might have happened to the crazy old chariot and the tombstone-tinted horses. But he muttered, under his breath: "Confound those movie idiots, anyway!"

Then he stared at the stranger who, he knew, had no ghost of a claim against him. "Hurt?" he demanded, deliberately curt, yet disquieted a little by the wistful face with the far-away look in its eyes.

"Not so much hurt, sir, as startled," was the stranger's quietly spoken reply.

"How about your horses?" inquired Hardy, squinting back along the empty road.

"They seem to have disappeared," acknowledged the man with the disturbingly mournful eyes.

"Then I can at least give you a lift," suggested the other with a glance at his wrist-watch. He had intended to be justly indignant at this disregard of road-rules and this loss of time on the brink of an altogether too busy day. But his earlier vague uneasiness had deepened into something almost intimidating before the sustained, unruffled dignity of the stranger who had obviously suffered more than he from the encounter.

"I should be grateful for that kindness," acknowledged the grey-faced man with the mournful eyes. And Hardy's sense of disquiet persisted, even when they were both back in the car and once more under way. He even covertly studied the strangely impassive figure at his side.

"Then you're not an actor, after all?" he finally ventured, more humble than he had intended to be.

"An actor?" echoed the other, slightly perplexed. "No, I am not an actor. I am an observer now, and nothing more."

"You're lucky to have time for that, in days like these," announced the man of action, not unconscious of the other's mild bewilderment as they gathered speed and went careening along a