Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/329

 and then, as he drove from one suspected place to another, he picked up Rinderfeld's trail again.

With a girl—a rather small, dark-haired, nice-looking girl—he had occupied a booth and, after some drinks had been served, they had gone out to Rinderfeld's roadster.

Drinking! For the girl had been drinking; Marjorie drinking. She had told Billy how she had drunk with Jake Saltro. Now she was drinking with Rinderfeld.

When Billy got word of them again, Rinderfeld had her under the influence of liquor; drunk or drugged, Billy thought; and again they were ahead of Billy, but now they were easier to trace. For they had halted this time at a wet resort near the edge of the city and had left it headed out from town on a concrete road running into the country. "For Cragero's, probably," some one said.

Cragero's was likely enough, a road house with a reputation, many miles away out in that dark, lonely country.

Billy drove out on that road to Cragero's as few ever had before and as William Whittaker never in his life previously had driven; he came with cut-out open and with electric horn sounding constantly, so that other motorists on the road that summer night supposed him an officer of some sort responding to an emergency call; they drew aside and let him by and watched his lights disappear, his motor roaring and horn screaming for way—way ahead.

At a turn, he left the road, skidded across soft ground to a fence and smashed a wheel; but he was unhurt, or very little injured, for he got back to the road as the nearest car was halting. This happened to be a cheaper car than Billy's and was driven