“Don’t be a fool,” said the Inspector harshly. He stood up and looked quickly from right to left. Below the lip of the road flames were gnawing.
“The odd part of it is,” muttered Ellery, drawing a lungful of smoke and expelling it without sound, “that I got you into this. It’s beginning to look like my last stupidity... No, it’s no use looking, dad. There’s no solution except to dash right through the thick of it. This is a narrow road and the fire’s already nibbling at the timber and brush beyond.” He chuckled again, but his eyes were hot behind his goggles and his face was damp chalk. “We shan’t last a hundred yards. Can’t see — the road twists and spins... The chances are, if the fire doesn’t get us, that we’ll go rocketing off the road.”
The Inspector, nostrils flaring, stared without speaking.
“It’s so damned melodramatic,” said Ellery with an effort, frowning over the Valley. “Not my notion at all of how to pass out. It smacks of... of charlatanry.” He coughed and flung his cigarette away with a grimace. “Well, what’s the decision? Shall we stay here and fry, or take our chances with the road, or try scrambling up the slope overhead? Quickly — our host is impatient.”
The Inspector flung himself down. “Get a grip on yourself. We can always take to the woods up there. Get going!”
“Right, sir,” murmured Ellery, his eyes full of a pain that was not caused by the smoke. The Duesenberg stirred. “It’s really no use looking, you know,” he said, pity suddenly invading his voice. “There’s no way out. This is a straight road — no side roads at all... Dad! Don’t get up again. Wrap your handkerchief around your mouth and nose!”
“I tell you to get going!” shouted the old man with exasperation. His eyes were red and watery; they glared like damped coals.
The Duesenberg staggered drunkenly ahead. The combined brilliance of the three lamps served only to bring out more starkly the yellow-white snakes of smoke wrapping their coils about the car. Ellery drove more by instinct than sense. He was trying desperately, beneath a rigid exterior, to recall the exact vagaries of the insane road ahead. There had been a curve... They were coughing constantly now; Ellery’s eyes, protected by the goggles as they were, nevertheless began to stream. A new odor came to their tortured nostrils, the smell of scorched rubber. The tires...
Cinders speckled their clothes, dropping softly.
From somewhere far below and far away, even above the snapping and crackling about them, came the faint persistent scream of a country fire siren. A warning, thought Ellery grimly, from Osquewa. They had seen the fire and were gathering the clans. Soon there would be hordes of little human ants with buckets and flails and handmade besoms swarming into the burning woods. These people were accustomed to fighting fires. No doubt they would master this one, or it would master itself, or providentially rain would come and smother it. But one thing seemed certain, thought Ellery as he strained into the smoke and coughed in hacking spasms: two gentlemen named Queen were destined to meet their fate on a blazing road along a lonely mountain miles from Centre Street and upper Broadway, and there would be no one to watch their exit from a world which had suddenly become impossibly sweet and precious...
“There!” shrieked the Inspector, jumping up. “There — El! I knew it, I knew it!” and he danced up and down in his seat, pointing to the left, his voice a wild blur of tears relief, and satisfaction. “I thought I remembered one side road. Stop the car!”
With a wildly beating heart Ellery jammed on his brakes. Through a rift in the smoke appeared a black cavernous gap. It was apparently a road leading up through the steep and almost impassable tangle of forest which matted the chest of Arrow Mountain like a giant’s hair.
Ellery wrestled powerfully with the wheel. The Duesenberg darted back, screamed, surged forward with a roar. In second gear it bit into a hard-packed dirt road set at an alarming angle to the main highway. The motor whined and keened and sang — and the car clawed its way up. It gathered speed, creeping up. It hurtled on, flashing up. Now the road began to wind; a curve, a swift wind inexpressibly sweet, scented with pine needles, a delicious chill in the air...
Incredibly, within twenty seconds, they had left fire, smoke, their fate and their death behind.
It was utterly black now — the sky, the trees, the road. The air was like liquor; it bathed their tortured lungs and throats with coolness that was half warmth, and they both became silently intoxicated upon it. They gulped it down, sniffing mightily until they felt their lungs must burst. Then they both began to laugh.
“Oh, God,” gasped Ellery, stopping the car. “It’s all — all too fantastic!”
The Inspector giggled: “Just like that! Whew.” He took out his handkerchief, trembling, and passed it over his mouth.
They both removed their hats and exulted in the cold feel of the wind. Once they looked at each other, trying to pierce the darkness. Both fell silent soon, the mood passing; and finally Ellery released his handbrake and set the Duesenberg in motion.
If the road below had been difficult, this ahead was impossible. It was little more than a cowpath, rocky and overgrown. But neither man could find it in his heart to curse it. It was a boon sent from heaven. It kept winding and climbing, and they wound and climbed with it. Of human beings not a trace. The headlights groped ahead of them like the antennae of an insect. The air grew steadily sharper, and the sweet sharp arboreal smell was like wine. Winged things hummed and dashed themselves against the lights.
Suddenly Ellery stopped the car again.
The Inspector, who had been dozing, jerked awake. “What’s the matter now?” he mumbled sleepily.
Ellery was listening intently. “I thought I heard something ahead.”
The Inspector cocked his gray head. “People up here, maybe?”
“It seems unlikely,” said Ellery dryly. There was a faint crashing from somewhere before them, not unlike the sound of a large animal in undergrowth far away.
“Mountain lion, d’ye think?” growled Inspector Queen, feeling a little nervously for his service revolver.
“Don’t think so. If it is, I daresay he’s in for more of a scare than we. Are there catamounts in these parts? Might be a — a bear or a deer or something.”
He urged the car forward again. Both were very wide awake, and both felt distinctly uncomfortable. The crashing grew louder.
“Lord, it sounds like an elephant!” muttered the old man. He had his revolver out now.
Suddenly Ellery began to laugh. There was a comparatively long stretch of straight road here, and around the far curve came two fingers of light, as if fumbling in the darkness. In a moment they straightened out and glared into the Duesenberg’s own brilliant eyes.
“A car,” chuckled Ellery. “Put that cannon away, you old lady. Mountain lion!”
“Didn’t I hear you say something about a deer?” retorted the Inspector. Nevertheless he did not return the revolver to his hip pocket.
Ellery stopped the car once more; the headlights of the approaching automobile were very close now. “Good to have company in a place like this,” he said cheerfully, jumping out and stepping before his own lights. “Hi!” he shouted, waving his arms.
It was a crouching old Buick sedan that had seen better days. It came to rest, its battered nose snuffling the dirt of the road. It seemed occupied by only one passenger: a man’s head and shoulders were dimly visible behind the dusty windshield, illuminated by the mingling lights of the cars.