CHAPTER 52
"All right, in a minute. Tell them I'll be right there…. Good night."
"Good night."
"Good night." He smiled—and suddenly, there seemed to be a pleasant significance in having been among the last to leave,
as if he had desired it all along. "Good night, old sport…. Good night."
But as I walked down the steps, I saw that the evening was not quite over. Fifty feet from the door, a dozen headlights illuminated a bizarre and tumultuous scene. In the
ditch beside the road, upright but violently stripped of one wheel, rested a new coupé that had left Sterling's driveway only minutes before. The sharp jut of a wall had caused
the wheel's detachment, which was now receiving considerable attention from half a dozen curious chauffeurs. However, as they had left their cars blocking the road, a
harsh, discordant din from those in the rear had been audible for some time and added to the already chaotic confusion of the scene.
A man in a long duster had dismounted from the wreck and now stood in the middle of
the road, looking from the car to the tire and from the tire to the onlookers in a pleasant, puzzled manner.
"See!" he explained. "It went in the ditch."
The fact was infinitely astonishing to him—and I recognized first the unusual quality of wonder and then the man—it was the late patron of Sterling's library.
"How did it happen?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"I know nothing about mechanics," he said decisively.
"But how did it happen? Did you run into the wall?" "Don't ask me," said Eddie, washing his hands of the matter.
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whole matter. 'I know very little about driving—next to nothing. It happened, and that's all I know.'
'Well, if you're a poor driver you shouldn't try driving at night.'
'But I wasn't even trying,' he explained indignantly, 'I wasn't even trying.'
An awed hush fell upon the bystanders. 'Do you want to commit suicide?'
'You're lucky it was just a wheel! A bad driver and not even TRYing!'
'You don't understand,' explained the criminal. 'I wasn't driving. There's another man in the car.'