Mr. Punch Awheel: The Humours of Motoring and Cycling by J. A. Hammerton (android e book reader TXT) 📗

["It is said that the perpetrators of a recent burglary got clear away with their booty by the help of an automobile. At this rate we may expect to be attacked, ere long, by automobilist highwaymen."—Paris Correspondent of Daily Paper.]

It was midnight. The wind howled drearily over the lonely heath; the moon shone fitfully through the driving clouds. By its gleam an observer might have noted a solitary automobile painfully jolting along the rough road that lay across the common. Its speed, as carefully noted by an intelligent constable half-an-hour earlier, was 41.275 miles an hour. To the ordinary observer it would appear somewhat less. Two figures might have been descried on the machine; the one the gallant Hubert de Fitztompkyns, the other Lady Clarabella, his young and lovely bride. Clarabella shivered, and drew her sables more closely around her.

"I am frightened," she murmured. "It is so dark and cold, Hubert, and this is a well-known place for highwaymen! Suppose we should be attacked?"

"Pooh!" replied her husband, deftly manipulating the oil-can. "Who should attack us when 'tis common talk that you pawned your diamonds a month ago? Besides, we have a swivel-mounted Maxim on our machine. Ill would it fare with the rogue who—Heavens! what was that?"

From the far distance sounded a weird, unearthly noise, growing clearer and louder even as Hubert and his wife listened. It was the whistle of another automobile!

In a moment Hubert had turned on the acetylene search-light, and gazed with straining eyes down the road behind him. Then he turned to his wife. "'Tis Cutthroat giving us chase," he said simply. "Pass the cordite cartridges, please."

Lady Clarabella grew deathly pale. "I don't know where they are!" she gasped. "I think—I think I must have left them on my dressing-table."

"Then we are lost. Cutthroat is mounted on his bony Black Jet, which covers a mile a minute—and he is the most blood-thirsty ruffian on the road. Shut off steam, Clarabella! We can but yield."

"Never!" cried his wife. "Here, give me the[Pg 90] lever; we are nearly at the top of this tremendously steep hill—we will foil him yet!"

Hubert was too much astonished to speak. By terrific efforts the gallant automobile arrived at the summit, when Clarabella applied the brake. Then she gazed down the narrow road behind her. "Take the starting-lever, Hubert," she said, "and do as I tell you."

Ever louder sounded the clatter of their pursuer's machine; at last its head-light showed in the distance, as with greatly diminished speed it began to climb the hill.

"Now!" shrieked Clarabella. "Full speed astern, Hubert! Let her go!"

The automobile went backwards down the hill like a flash of lightning. Cutthroat had barely time to realise what was happening before it was upon him. Too late he tried to steer Black Jet out of the way. There was a yell, a sound of crashing steel, a cloud of steam. When it cleared away, it revealed Hubert and Clarabella still seated on their machine, which was only slightly damaged, while Cutthroat and Black Jet were knocked into countless atoms!