Page:Frank Owen - The Actress.djvu/115

Rh "You fool! Slacken down!" he cried angrily. "Are you trying to wreck the car?"

"I can't!" bellowed back the chauffeur. "The darn thing has got beyond my control! It won't stop!"

As he spoke they were racing over a mountain road particularly perilous. On one side, the rocks piled up toward the sky for almost a thousand feet; on the other, they could look down, a sheer drop of a hundred feet, to a little stream below. Even as Roger Patterson gazed down shudderingly toward the water, the car gave an ominous lurch and appeared to pause on the very brink of the cliff. He expected momentarily to be hurled into the air and dashed to pieces on the rocks below. And yet the car kept on.

Marion Maxwell crouched in one corner, her face flushed, her eyes flashing. It might be extremely perilous, she thought, but also she admitted that it was a distinct novelty. One thing she noticed which Roger Patterson had evidently overlooked. The chauffeur might have lost control of the car, but he had the steering gear under perfect control. She could tell that by the way he missed colliding a hundred times with great, huge trees on the crooked road.

At last they sped down from the dangerous cliff road and out onto a comparatively level country.

"Now is our chance!" shrieked Roger Patterson. "Jump!"

But the girl did not move. In great surprise, she realized that he was frightened. His face was pale with fear and his mouth twitched nervously. Apparently his nerves were strained almost to the