Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 155, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1912 — The FLYING MERCURY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The FLYING MERCURY

B y Eleanor M. Ingram

Author of “The Game and the Candle ** IltaatntioM By* Rj4Y WALTERS

;■ 1 - ■ SYNOPSIS. The story opens on Long Island, near New York city, where Miss Emily Ffrench, a relative of Ethan Ffrench, manufacturer of the celebrated "Mercury” automobile, loses her way. The r car has stopped and her cousin, Dick Ffrench, is too muddled with drink to direct it aright. They meet another car which Is run by a professional racer namedLeetrange. The latter fixes up the Ffrench car and directs Miss Ffrench how to proceed (homeward. Ethan Ffrench has disinherited his son, who has disappeared. He informs Emily plainly that he would like to have her marry Dick, who is a. good-natured but irresponsible fellow. It appears that a partner of Ethan Ffrench wanting an ex- - »ert to race with the "Mercury” at auto events, has engaged Lestrange, and at the Ffrench factory Emily encounters the young man. They refer pleasantly to their meeting when Dick comes along and recognises the young racer. Dick likes the way Lestrange Ignores their first meeting when he appeared to a disadvantage. Lestrange tells Emily that he Will try to educate her indifferent cousin •a an automobile expert. Dick undertakes his business schooling under the tutelage of Lestrange. Dick is sheer grit, and in making a test race meets with an accident. Lestrange meets Emily ih the moonlit garden of the Ffrench home. Under an impulse he cannot control he kisses her ana she leaves him* confessing tn her own heart that she returns his love. CHAPTER Vll.—(Continued). *1 thought there was to be no more trouble,” she faltered, distressed. Lestrange looked down at her steadily, his gray eyes darkening to an expression she had never seen. “Have I no right?" was his question. “Is there no canceling of a claim, is there no subsequent freedom? Is It all no use, Emily?” Vaguely awed and frightened, her fingers tightened on his arm In a panic of surrender. “I will come to you, I will come! You know best what is right—l trust you to tell me. Forgive me. dear. 1 wanted to —’’ He silenced her all the light flashing back to his face. “A promise; hush! Oh, I shall win tonight with that singing in my ears. 1 have more to say to you, but not now. I must see Bailey, somehow, before I go." “He is at the house; let me send him here to you.” “If you come back with him.” i They laughed together. “I will — Do you know,” her color deepened rosily, “they call you ‘Darling;’ 1 have never heard your own name.” “My name is David,” Lestrange said quietly, and kissed her for farewell. The earth danced under Emily’s feet aa she ran across the lawns, the sun glowed warm, the brook tinkled qver the cascades in a very madness of mirth. At the head of the veranda steps she turned to look once more at the roof of the white pavilion among the locust trees. “Uncle will like you when he knows you,” she laughed in her heart. “Any one must like you.” The servant she met in the hall said that Mr. Bailey bad gone out, and >r. Ffrench, also, but separately, the former having taken the short route across toward the factory. That way Emily went in pursuit, Intending to overtake him with her pony cart. But upon reaching the stables, past which the path ran, she found Bailey himself engaged in an inspection of the limousine in company with the chauffeur. “You’ll have to look into her differential, Anderson,” he was pronouncing, when the young girl came beside him. “Gome, please,” she urged breathlessly. ii “Come?” repeated Bailey, wheeling, with his slow, benevolent smile. “Sure, Miss Emily; where?” She shook her head, not replying until they were safely outside; then: “To Mr. Lestrange; he is in the pavilion. He wants to see you.” “To Lestrange!” he almost shouted, halting. Lestrange here?” “Yes. There is time; he says there Is time. He is going back as soon as he sees you." “But what’s he doing here? What does he mean by risking his neck Without any practice.” - came to see me,” she whispered, and stood confessed. ' c t “God!" said Bailey, quite reverently, moment of speechless stupe- - faction. “You, and him!" She lifted confiding eyes to him, but I wanted you to Know because you likeus both. Dick "bln- ZThe is

the park, carrying his hat in his hand. z A short distance from the pavilion Emily stopped abruptly, turning a startled face to her" companion. “Some one is there,” she said. “Some one Is speaking. I forgot that Uncle Ethan had gone out.” ~~- She heard Bailey catch his breath oddly. Her own pulses began to beat with heavy irregularity, as a few steps farther brought the two opposite the open arcade. There they halted, frozen. In the place Emily had left, where all her feminine toys still lay, Mr. ffrench was seated as one exhausted by the force of overmastering emotion; his hands clenched on the arms of the chair; his face drawn with passion. Opposite him stood Lestrange, colorless and still as Emily had never conceived him, listening in absolute silence to the bitter address pouring from the other’s Ups with a low-toned violence Indescribable.

“I told you then, never again to come here,” first fell upon .Emily's conscious hearing. "I supposed you were at least Ffrench enough to take a dismissal. What do you want here, money? I warned you to live upon the allowance sent every month to your bankers, for I would pay no more even to escape the intolerable disgrace of your presence here. Did you imagine me so deserted that I would accept even you as a successor? Wrong; you are not missed. My nephew Richard takes your place, and is fit to take it. Go back to Europe and your low-born wife; there Is no lack in my household.” The voice broke in an excess of savage triumph, and Lestrange took the pause without movement or gesture. “I am going, sir, and I shall never oome back,” he answered, never more quietly. “I can take a dismissal, yes. If ever I have wished peace or hoped for an accord that never existed betweed us, I go ctiredofsuch folly. But hear this much, since I am arraigned at your bar: I have never yet disgraced your name or mine unless by the boy’s mischief which sent me from college. The money you speak of, I have never used; ask Bailey of it, if you will.” He hesitated, and in the empty moment there came across the mile of June air

the roaring noon whistle of the factory. Involuntarily he turned his head toward the call, but as instantly recovered himself from the self-betray-al. “There is another matter to be arranged, but there is no time now. Nor even in concluding it will I ever come here again, sir.” There was that in his bearing, in the dignified carefulness of courtesy with which he saluted the other before turning to go, that checked even Ethan Ffrench. But as Lestrange crossed the threshold of the little building,. Emily ran from the thicket to meet him, her eyes a dark splendor in her white face, her hands outstretched. “Not like this!” she panted. "Not without seeing me! Oh, I might have guessed—” His vivid color and animation re turned as he caught her to him, heedless of witnesses. “You dare? My dear, my dear, not even a question? There is no one

like you. Say, shall I take you now, or send Dick for you after the race?” Mr. Ffrench exclaimed some inarticulate words, but neither heard him. “Send Dick,” Emily answered, her eyes on the gray eyes above her. “Send Dick —I understand, I will come.” He kissed her once, then she drew back and he went down the terraces toward the gates. As Emily sank down on the bench by the pavilion door, Bailey brushed past her, running after the straight, lithe figure that went steadily cm out of fight among the huge trees planted and tended by five generations of Ffrenches. When the vistas of the park were empty, Emily slowly turned to face ber uncle. ■ “You love David Ffrench?” he asked, his voice thin and “Yes," she answered. She had no need to ask if Lestrange were meant “He is married to some woman of the mnsic halls.’’ “No" “How do you know? He has told you?” i■ She lifted to him the superby confidence of her glance, although nervous tremors shook her in wavelike sue- —' ? T r “If he had been married, he would not have made me care for him. Me has asked me to be his wife.” They were equally strange to each qtoer in these new characters, and equally spent by emotion. Neither |ta°ril£re her ßo BI M^ tte f<j^d h *

when he came back later, to take his massive stand in the doorway, his hands in his pockets and his strong jaw set * "I think that things are kind at mixed up here, Mr. Ffrench," he stated grimly. “I guess I’m the one to straighten them out a bit; I’ve loved Mr/David from the time he was a kid and never saw him get a square deal yet You asked him what he was doing here —I’ll tell you; he is Lestrange.” There is a degree ot amazement which precludes speech; Mr. Ffrench looked back at his partner, mute. “He Is Lestrange. He never meant you to know; he’d have left without your ever knowing, but for Miss Emily. I guess I don’t need to remind you of what he’s done; if it hadn’t been for him we might have closed our doors some day. He understands the business as none of us back-num-ber, old-fashioned ones do; he took hold and shook some life into it We can make cars, but he can make people buy them. Advertising! Why, just that fool picture he drew on the back of a pad, one day, of a row of thermometers up to one hundred forty, with the sign ‘Mercuries are at the top,’ made more people notice.” Bailey cleared his throat. “He was always making people notice, and laughing while he did it. He’s risked his neck on every course going, to bring our cars in first, he’s lent his fame as a racing driver to help us along. And now everything is fixed the way we want, he’s thrown out. What did he do it for? He thought he needed to square accounts with you, for being born, I suppose; so when he heard how things were going and offered his help. At least, that’s what he said. I believe he came because he couldn’t bear to see the old place go under.” There was a skein of blue silk swinging over the .edge of the .table. Mr. Ffrench picked It up and replaced it in Emily’s work basket before replying. ’ "If this remarkable story is true,” he began, accurately precise In accent.

“You don’t need me to tell you It is,” retorted Bailey. “You know what my new manager’s been doing; why, you disliked him without seeing him, but you had- to admit his good work. And I heard you talking about his allowance, Mr. Ffrench. He never touched it, not from the first; it piled up for six years. Last April, when we needed cash in a hurry, he drew It out and gave it to me to buy aluminum. When he left here first he drove a taxicab in New York city until he got into racing work and made Darling Lestrange famous all over the continent. I guess it went pretty hard for a while; If he’d been the things you called him, he’d have gone to the devil alone in New York. But he didn’t.”

An oriole darted In one arcade and out again with a musical whir of wings. The clink of glass and silver sounded from the house windows with a pleasant cheeriness and suggestion of comfort and plenty. “He made good,” Bailey concluded, thoughtfully. “But it sounded queer to me to hear you tell him you didn’t want him around because Mr. Dick took his place. I know, and Miss Emily knows, that Dick Ffrench was no use on earth for any place until Mr. David took him in hand and made him fit to live. That’s all, I guess, that I had to say; I’ll get back to work." He turned, but paused to glance around. “It’s going to be pretty dull at the factory for me. And between us we’ve sent Lestrange to the track with a nice set of nerves.” His retreating footsteps died away to leave the noon hush unbroken. As before, uncle and niece were left opposite each other, the crumpled newspaper where Lestrange’s name showed in heavy type lying on the floor between them. The effect of Bailey’s final sentence had been to leave Emily dizzied by apprehension. But when Mr. Ffrench rose and passed out, she aroused to look up at him eagerly. “Uncle,” she faltered. Disregarding or unseeing her outstretched hand, he went on and left her there alone. And then Emily dared rescue the newspaper. “A substitute,” she whispered. “A> substitute,” and laid her wet cheek against the pictured driver. No one lunched at the Ffrench home that day, efeept the servants. Near three o’clock In the afternoon Mr. Ffrench came back to the pavilion where Emily still sat. “Go change your gown,” he commanded, In his usual tone. “We will start now. I have sent for Bailey and ordered Anderson to bring the automobile.** “Start?” she wondered, bewildered. He met her gaze with a stately repellence of comment. “For the Beach. I understand this race lasts twenty-four hours. Have you any Objection?” Objection to being near David! Emily sprang to her feet. (TO BE CONTINUED.) ••

"Well, Then—But Come, He Is Walting.”