The Adventure Megapack

by Wildside Press

  Then Pinkie realized who was beside him. Furthermore, Stubby had the advantage of position, being in the top lane, where higher speed was feasible. In a panic over his temerity, Pinkie eased up. His car lost headway, and at that fateful moment the right front wheel struck the end of a board that had been loosened by the pounding of the cars.

  The white car swerved out of line. Pinkie, accustomed to the dirt, wrenched the wheel viciously to the left to correct the skid. That finished what the loose board had started. Pinkie had oversteered, and the rear end whipped around.

  The car began its spin as it entered the homestretch. Its momentum carried it, spinning end for end, down into the pits flanking the starting line and it struck the concrete retaining wall. Doc Elton, standing there a hundred feet away, gripping his black briar pipe between his teeth, felt cold and dizzy and too weak to move. The wall deflected the berserk car, and it shot back towards the board deck. But its wheel caught and it turned over. It rolled twice and then came to a stop, one wheel still intact and spinning feebly above the wreckage.

  Pinkie had only a cracked rib. Doc Elton thought of nothing else but his son’s welfare, until it was definitely established two hours later that he was unhurt. Then Doc gave way to his emotions in the field hospital.

  “Burns wrecked you, son!” he swore solemnly. “He did it purposely. It may have been an accident at Santa Monica, but not here today.— He’ll never do it again and live. And he’ll never win another race in which you are a starter. I’ll see to that.”

  “But dad,” Pinkie exclaimed horrified by Doc’s outburst. “It was an accident. My own fault. I oversteered.”

  “Listen,” said Doc, ignoring Pinkie. The mechanical voice of a loud speaker on the public address system was just announcing the fact that Stubby Burns had taken the lead with only ten miles to go. He was a certain winner. “There’s your answer. Burns knew you were a menace to him. So he eliminated you early in the race.”

  Pinkie gave up in despair. Crash-shock. That was the answer. Doc was still steering the blind side of the curve.

  * * * *

  During the next few weeks, Doc continued to rave and Pinkie to laugh it off. Doc’s birthday was approaching, and Pinkie made a tobacco pipe from wrecked parts of the white car. He cut the bowl from the tough wood of the smashed steering wheel, and reamed out a stem from an aluminum conrod.

  The pipe was a resplendent affair, its stem glistening from the polish Pinkie had given it. When he presented it to Doc, his father regarded the memento dubiously. But he went so far as actually to smoke it, laying away his seasoned briar with regrets. It was a sacrifice that he would have made only for Pinkie, for Doc and the briar had been inseparable companions for years.

  * * * *

  Six weeks later, Doc carried the aluminum pipe to Coltonia for the two hundred mile race. The white car had been repaired and rebuilt. It had lost none of its speed. And Pinkie seemed unaffected by his crash. He drove in the same old mechanical, efficient way at Coltonia, practicing faithfully and laboriously. He displayed neither brilliancy nor inaptitude. He was merely another driver who would clutter up the track while others scintillated and won the plaudits and the prizes. He was still a robot.

  Doc began to abandon hope. To relieve his mind, he continued his bitter attacks on Stubby Burns. It was a habit with him now. He blamed the innocent Stubby for every mishap or minor irritation. Pinkie grew so accustomed to this quirk in his father’s character that he no longer thought anything of it. Meanwhile, Stubby pursued his normal course of preparing to win the Coltonia.

  On the evening before the race, Pinkie found something to worry about. He dropped into Doc’s room at the hotel for their usual chat before retiring and found the old driver sitting at a table, busily greasing and cleaning a revolver. The weapon was a cheap, nickel-plated thirty-two of a popular make, and Doc had polished its barrel to a glistening sheen.

  “I found it back of the radiator over there,” Doc said carelessly in explanation. “Somebody hid or dropped it there. It was loaded but rusty. Thought I’d tune it up just to do something.”

  “Better give it to the management,” Pinkie suggested.

  “I may take it to the track tomorrow and potshoot the tires of any wild guys who try to pass you,” Doc laughed. “A bullet can beat the fastest speed bug that ever lived.”

  Pinkie was thinking of some of the threats Doc had made against Stubby Burns. Crash-shock. Just how far could its evil work go? He did not sleep that night. He was still thinking of the gun as they towed the white car to the track at noon the next day. Doc seemed nervous, but Pinkie could detect no suspicious bulges in Doc’s pockets and so his mind rested easier.

  Pinkie had qualified far back in the list as usual; and as the twenty machines seared the stretch under the green flag, he settled down to his normal task of driving securely and conservatively. Stubby Burns, who had the pole, booted his red mount into the lead on the first curve, opened up a hundred yard gap over his nearest competitor in the first lap, and continued adding to his advantage as the race settled down to a fierce speed duel.

  The Coltonia bowl was considerably slower than the Ocean City layout. Older, and built with less regard for drivers’ comfort, its turns were pitched so steeply and the approaches were sharp and hazardous. Its mile and a quarter length was packed with perils.

  Pinkie drove with his old mechanical perfection. He even found himself beginning to enjoy this race. The constant vigilance, the extreme delicacy necessary in handling the car on this treacherous surface, struck a responsive chord. Some of Doc Elton’s old spirit glowed within him. Its flame was feeble at first, however, and Pinkie rode on, content to remain back in the field.

  Stubby, at fifty miles, had rolled up an advantage of a mile over Pinkie, who was now eighth in place. The entire field was turning the bowl at an average above the old track record, because of Stubby’s fierce leadership. Tommy Mandot, an experienced pilot as skillful and as daring as Stubby himself, was in second place only a hundred yards back of the leader. Mandot was riding Stubby fast into the turns, awaiting a chance to grab the lead should Stubby relax or be guilty of a driving error.

  But Stubby did not relax and neither did he make a mistake. He had a heavy foot clamped on the throttle and he never eased off. He held Mandot grimly in second place. Notch by notch the average advanced, for the roaring motors seemed to wind up to greater power as they droned ever onward. Over the streaming oval gathered a pall of blue castor oil smoke, through which flickered darting tongues of flame from twenty screaming exhausts.

  * * * *

  Pinkie, to his father’s amazement, was now more than holding his own. The leaders no longer gained on him. He clung determinedly to his position a mile behind Stubby. Now and then he mowed down an opposing car, sweeping past surely and expertly. At one hundred miles he was in fourth place. His driving was positive, almost brilliant.

  Pinkie himself did not realize that he had pushed so far up in the list. He did not know why he was driving so swiftly. But somewhere back in his head something urged him to go on, to turn his wheels over ever faster. Perhaps he was subconsciously thinking of that gun he had seen in Doc’s possession the evening before. Perhaps it was instinct. But anyway he was slamming his slim, white car over the boards faster than he had believed it possible for him to drive.

  Jimmy Dance, in a red Comet Special was his next victim. Pinkie jockeyed past Dance on the treacherous south curve, thereby assuming third place. Only Stubby and Mandot were ahead of him now.

  Pinkie’s speed was beginning to cut into their advantage also, and the pit crews were awakening. Blackboards flashed signals to both Stubby and Mandot. White arrows, pointing to the number of Pinkie’s car, informed the two veterans that a challenger was coming up. And Stubby and Mandot both bore down heavier on the gas.

  Pinkie gained but little now. He was still half a mile behind, and the average was five miles an hour faster than was safe on this perilous course.

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p; The velocity began to take its toll at one hundred and twenty miles. A green car, bearing an English pilot, came a cropper on the north turn, just as Pinkie was about to lap it. It swerved into the upper fence as its pilot momentarily swayed it off balance, ripping off a hundred feet of heavy steel guard railing as it did so. Then the remains of the machine tumbled down the track and onto the apron.

  Pinkie dodged the wreckage by threading through it at one hundred and thirty miles an hour. He caught a glimpse of the Englishman’s limp form lying down on the apron among the debris. Then he was past, his lips compressed, his eyes hard, and sorrow in his heart. He did not slow down. Neither did any of the others. It was part of the game, the sacrifice that any of them might be called upon to make at any time.

  At one hundred and fifty miles, the field was thinned down by wrecks and motor trouble to an even dozen cars. Stubby still blistered the boards in the lead, with Mandot now half the length of the stretch behind him. Pinkie had moved up on Mandot and was desperately hanging to the tow from the veteran’s car, trying to nurse enough speed from his humming four wheels to go past.

  Pinkie could do no more. He believed he had reached the limit of his speed. On the turns now his car was almost out of control. He could hear the tortured tires squealing shrill protest above the song of the motor on each dizzy spin around a curve, He could feel the sickening sway of the machine as it leaned on its outside wheels, and he knew that the rubber was growing hot and thin under such punishment.

  “But they’re no better off,” he told himself, revelling in this newfound thrill. He was being hypnotized by the lure of speed.

  * * * *

  Ten miles more were unreeled, and Stubby still held sway, using sheer, brutal speed to stave off every challenger. Pinkie had been so busy with his perilous task that he had ignored his pit throughout the race. He knew he was in third place, and vaguely he realized that the event was nearing its finish. But beyond that he had not glanced at a blackboard flash.

  Now he looked down into his pit, a sudden thought coming to him. Doc Elton was standing there, leaning tensely on the front pit wall and there was something in his hand—something from which Pinkie caught the reflected, silvery gleam of the waning sun. It was a brief view as Pinkie flashed by, but it registered vividly on his mind. For Doc seemed to be holding that object so that none of the men in the pit with him could see it. He had his left arm carelessly draped around the right hand that held it.

  ‘The gun! The gun!” Pinkie moaned. “He’s gunning for Stubby.”

  Doc had sworn that Stubby would never defeat his son again in a race, and now he evidently was preparing to make good his threat.

  Then Pinkie fought off the nausea that had momentarily gripped him and bent lower over the wheel. He began to drive as no man ever had driven that track before. He knew that he must beat Stubby Burns. It was the only way to save Stubby from the madness of Doc’s plan—and the only way to save Doc, too.

  Pinkie passed Mandot on the next lap, pushing by at the most dangerous apex of the rough south curve. It was fierce, reckless, death-defying velocity, a pace that seemed sure to carry the white car into the outside rail that it was grazing. But Pinkie held his wheels in line with superb control.

  Stubby was nearly an eighth of a mile ahead. There were less than forty miles, less than twenty minutes of driving, to go. Stubby glanced back and recognized the oncoming menace. He still had a notch or two of both power and nerve, and he opened up with both. Pinkie now gained so slowly that it seemed hopeless.

  Doc watched his son’s epic battle for a few laps. Then he could stand it no more, for Pinkie’s car was swinging wildly on the curves now, grazing the fence and threatening to go entirely out of control on every recovery in the stretches.

  “Slow him down,” he snarled to Bing Morgan, the pit captain. “He’s going to break up at that speed. Slow him down, quick, before something awful happens!”

  Bing had the blackboard ready, and now he held it aloft as Pinkie moaned by on his next lap. It carried only the easily read word ‘SLOW’ in big letters; but Doc groaned, for Pinkie had not even glanced into the pit. He did not see the command. So terrific was his velocity that he did not dare glance away from that dizzy, spinning track for even a fraction of a second.

  Two more laps went by, and it was evident that Pinkie was beginning to eat into the gulf that separated him from the red-hot exhaust of Stubby’s car.

  Ten miles more, and Pinkie was only a hundred yards behind. Then Doc Elton suddenly screeched hoarsely as the white car darted past through the blue fog. A slapping sound accompanied the crescendo roar of the motor, and Doc caught a glimpse of a blurred object whirling around the right front wheel of Pinkie’s car.

  “He’s throwing a tread,” Doc shouted. “Watch out, son! Watch out! Slow down before that rubber blows.” But Pinkie, of course, could not hear mere words, and so the blackboard with its frantic messages was again called into play. Still Pinkie did not see them!

  Pinkie had felt the car lurch as the tread on the tire began to strip away from the casing. The tread had worn through in one section, and the heat from friction was melting it away from its seat. The revolving wheel completed the job on the back stretch. With a final slap and lurch of the car, the tread was stripped clear of the casing and hurled two hundred feet in the air.

  * * * *

  The tire was now down to the cords. Pinkie knew the peril in which he rode. That tire was ready to blow. It could not stand up long under the terrific punishment it was receiving, and nine times out of ten a flat front at one hundred and thirty miles an hour would turn a car somersaulting.

  But Pinkie held his foot down. He was pale and shaken, but he ignored that thin, white streak that spun on the right wheel. He did not even dare look at it.

  “I’ve gotta beat Stubby,” he told himself over and over. “I’ve gotta.—Please don’t blow now! Oh, God, how much longer? If I only knew. It must be almost over.—I’ve gotta beat Stubby!”

  Doc Elton grew faint when he realized that Pinkie was continuing to drive on the weak tire.

  “I drove him to it,” he told himself, trembling as he followed the streaking course of the white bullet around and around the bowl, his tired old eyes dark with misery. He had stuffed the gleaming object into the pocket of his coat where it rested, forgotten.

  Pinkie still gained slowly but surely. With two laps to go, he was only three lengths behind Stubby, and his face was being peppered with fine splinters thrown from the track like darts by the wheels of the leading car. They were knocking off the miles now with throttles to the floor. Neither eased off on the curves. They were riding wide open.

  On the next to the last lap, Pinkie chopped another length from Stubby’s advantage. Like phantoms, they bulleted down the homestretch in the late afternoon haze. Other cars were still on the track, battling for positions, but they were merely subsidiary characters to the two leading actors who were fighting in this dramatic duel for supremacy.

  The blue flag denoting the last lap snapped before the two pilots’ eyes, and then they were disappearing down the stretch on their final whirl around the bowl.

  Pinkie knew that he could do no more in the way of speed. The motor on the white car was revving at top capacity, but top speed was not enough, so evenly were they matched.

  Ordinarily, it is the unwritten custom to pass an overtaken car on the outside. But Stubby’s speed was so great that he could not hold his car low, and Pinkie knew that his only chance was to cut down and pass beneath, as Stubby drifted high on the curves.

  “Will that tire stand it?” Pinkie asked himself, even as he started the maneuver. He swung high on the takeoff from the stretch, and cut far down below the lower white guideline on the steeply banked south turn. At the same time Stubby drifted into the upper lane.

  The tire did hold that time, and Pinkie emerged into the backstretch with Stubby only a wheel’s width in the lead. They ate up that straightaway in a gulp, so beautiful in f
light, side by side, that few in the grandstands realized the terrible peril in which they rode. Stubby, too, could now see the menace of that thin tire with its ever widening streak of white, for Pinkie’s right front wheel hummed so close to Stubby’s elbow that he could have reached out and touched it.

  Then the last curve. Pinkie knew, now that he was on the inside, that he must stay there. The few feet advantage in distance that he would gain by the curvature of the track would win for him. The question was whether he could hold his machine there. It would attempt to drift high because of centrifugal force and because he did not have the advantage of entering this turn high and cutting low, as he had done before. If he wrestled with the wheel to hold the car down, it probably would scrape the last remaining protection from that thin tire.

  But nevertheless he did hold it in the lower lane, manhandling the machine out of its tendency to slide up the track. He could hear his tires squealing and he smelt the pungent odor of burned rubber. But Pinkie’s white car emerged into the last stretch half a length in the lead—and held it as the two machines flashed down upon the checkered flag. Pinkie held his foot down, but he was shrinking. He sensed what was coming. Intuition told him that the tortured front tire was finally going. Now! Now! Now! The checkered flag floated nearer, seeming to approach with the leaden slowness of a nightmare.

  Then the white finish line gleamed beneath Pinkie’s wheels a hundredth of a second ahead of Stubby’s. He had won!

  A pent up cheer rolled from the grandstand, but it ceased suddenly as though some titanic hand had closed the stops on a great pipe organ. For a pistol-like report sounded from the finish line just as Pinkie’s victorious wheels crossed it. The white car continued its course for a hundred feet, then the right front could be seen spinning in a blur. It had blown.

  Pinkie wrestled grimly with the wheel to hold it up. But no human hands could have prevented this crackup. Stubby swerved high out of the way as the white car whirled around and then shot down towards the pits, skidding backwards at more than a hundred miles an hour.