THE ROADSIDE WRECKER.
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A Christmas Transport Tale.
It seemed to come straight al him—a blinding flash of light which made him blink, then shut his eyes. lie tried to open them again, and was dazzled ; realized his danger, took his foot off the accelerator pedal, and clapped on his brakes. Bat it was too late--'
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' T WAS Christmas Eve and sleety snow was falling heavily. It formed a slippery carpet on the smooth roadsurface and, more than once, Driver Hardy, crouching muffled up behind the wheel of his lorry, felt the back wheels slide, and gave the steering wheel a sudden twist to counteract the skid. The snow drove in upon him and settled in little heaps on his shoulders and on the front of the cap he had crammed down over his ears. Now and again a gust of icy wind slapped some of it against his face, stinging it pain fully. His feet were nearly frozen. Sitting there, muffled up in his old sheepskin-collared coat---a relic of R.A.S.C. days—he cursed his luck frequently and with vivid eloquence. Why, in the name of all that was lurid, he asked himself, should people choose Christmas Eve, of all days in the year, for moving house? He had groused a bit when the boss asked him to take on the job. It meant a long run, and there was an appointment with a certain young lady that had to be postponed in consequence. Nevertheless, he was a willing worker, and eventually had set out, about midday, on his 100-mile jaunt, for the people who owned the furniture were poor and would, he knew, be in difficulties without it. He would have preferred to start earlier, but they had taken all the morning to fill the old bus up with furniture.
He had been prepared to finish the journey in the 'dark, but snow was more than he had bargained for, and the road, unfortunately, was new to him.
• It was getting dark now, and the _white carpet lay evenly over the road, the hedgerows, and the surrounding fields. It became more and mom difficult to distinguish the roadway from the grass which edged it, and his lamps did not help him very much. He had slowed clown considerably, and, with eyes straining to pierce the gathering darkness, he strove to keep his lorry well in the centre of the road. He began to repent of the generosity which had made him start out without a mate. "We needn't spoil two Christmas dinners," he had said to the boss. "I'll manage all right alone." He was doing his best, but it was difficult and unpleasant, and, as the evening wore on, things did not improve. It must have been about 7 o'clock when he was meditating whether or not to put up at the next "pub." he came across, and continue his journey in. the morning.
It was at that moment the light struck him.
Describing it afterwards to his cronies, he found the occurrence rather difficult to explain. It seemed to come straight at him—a blinding flash of, light which made him blink, then shut his eyes. He tried to open them again, and was dazzled; realized his
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. . . a blinding flash of light which made him blink, then shut his eyes."
danger, took his foot off the accelerator pedal, and clapped on his brakes. But it was too late. He felt the lorry lurch violently, had a vivid sensation of emptiness inside him, as one does on a water chute, felt himself going. . . going. . . Then there was a grinding crash, his fingers slipped from the steering wheel, and he shot sideways over the dashboard.
When he collected his later, he realized that he scattered wits a moment was lying unhurt, if uncomfortable, on a closeclipped, snow-covered hedge. The lorry was lying on its side in the ditch, one front wheel doubled up awkwardly underneath and the other sticking up grotesquely in the air. The engine had stopped, and there was an uncanny silence all around, broken only by the constant drip, drip of the falling sleet. Hardy scrambled off the hedge and looked up and down the road. He had expected to see the tail lamp of some powerful car vanishing into the distance. At least, he might have shaken a fist at it. But there was — nothing. Just the dim White read, visible a few yards each way, and darkness all round. Hardy stood motionless in the middle of the road and whistled as well as his frozen lips allowed.
" Well, that's a corker I" he muttered. " Where the 'ell could that light have come from " He stared blankly into the surrounding darkness, but the only thing that met his gaze was a side lamp, apparently undamaged and still burning, perched at a funny angle on the upturned lorry side.
It gave him an idea. Unshipping it carefully, he made it serve as an inspection lamp, and proceeded to examine the wrecked vehicle.
"Humph " he remarked. "Radiator's done in for a start. One front wheel na-poohed, and the front axle twisted all to 'ell!' Nice little job that is, I don't think ! " He stood back and thoughtfully surveyed the dim outlines of the wreckage. • "Well," he ruminated, "it's not much good my hanging about here. I'd better walk on to the next pub. and get a bed for the night, and 'phone the boss up in the morning. It'll be a nice Christmas present for him," and Hardy chuckled rather grimly.
Taking the side lamp with him for use as a lantern he started off in the same direction as he had been travelling before. He had not gone more than about twenty yards when the read forked suddenly, and he sought, with his lamp, for a direction poet. His search was unfruitful, but he found something else instead-; namely, a gate in the hedge near the angle of the roads, and behind it there loomed up dimly the outline of a house. "In luck's way, after ail!" thought Hardy, and, e43 opening the gate, groped his way along a gravel path to what was, apparently, the 'front door. The place .did not look inviting. No lights showed from the windows, and the snow had piled on the doorstep in a driven heap. He fumbled for a bell handle, pulled it, and heard the bell ring violently inside. "That ought to wake 'em up," he thought, and listened for signs of life within. None came.
" That's funny," he muttered. "It is too early yet for folks to be in bed," and be again rang the bell.
"What do you want?" he snapped suspiciously. Driver Hardy was a bit taken aback. As he said to his cronies afterwards: "Gave me quite a turn, he did. Anybody'd have thought I Was a burglar."
"Broke clown on a lorry," he explained briefly. "Can you tell me the way to the nearest pub.?' The old man looked at him sharply. " There is no publichouse within ten miles of here," he said Hardy ,gioaned inwardly. He was in no mood to walk ten miles on auch a night.
.544 " Lummy I what am I going to do ? " he asked. 'I'm fairly stranded. Suppose you couldn't give me a shake-down, guv'ner? be suggested.. The old man looked rather dubious, then:— " Lend me that lamp," he said, "and let's have a look at you."
Hardy did so, and was solemnly inspected from head to foot. The old man seemed satisfied.
" Come in," he said abruptly. " I'll think about it."
He lead the way down a stone-flagged passage to a good-sized room in which a fire'made a cheerful blaze. Hardy noted, with some surprise, that there was electric light. Then his ear detected a faint chuff chuff somewhere down below, and guessed at a lighting set in the cellar.
The old man was looking at him in a more friendly manner.
"Best take off your coat and get warm," he suggested in his snappy way. " Hungry ? "
Hardy nodded.
"I'll get you something to eat."
He shuffled out of the room, and returned presently with a loaf, some cheese, and a bottle of beer.
"'Plain fare," he said, "but I live plainly myself."
Hardy thanked him, and attacked the repast with a, will. Afterwards, as they sat by the fire, the old man questioned him about his accident. Catechised would be, perhaps; a better word. Hardy felt almost as if he were in a witness-box. There was something mysterious, he thought, in the old man's eager curiosity.
"And this light," he asked, finally ; "you have no idea from where it came? "
"None whatever," said Hardy. "It fair blinded me •' I couldn't see a thing. It licks me hollow." "It certainly sounds a funny business," said the old many and he turned aside and poked the fire. Hardy thought that he saw the flicker of a smile on his lips, and it left him vaguely puzzled.
Later, he gave Hardy a shake-down in a spare room upstairs, and apologized for the disoomfort of the accommodation.
"It doesn't worry me," said Hardy. "I've slept rougher than this in France," and he rolled himself up in the blankets his host had given him, • and tried to get to sleep.
But, for some reason or another, sleep refused to come. He lay think ing over the events of the evening and trying to piece them together He could hear the old man moving about downstairs at intervals, and the faint chuff-chuff of the petrol engine still went on. Gradually, however, he began to feel really drowsy, and he had almost dropped off to sleep when the noise of a ear in the distance roused h i m once again.
Some instinct prompted him to get up, and, moving aside the blind, he 'looked out of the window.
In the distance he could see the headlights of the car approaching rapidly, circles of light which grew larger every second. Then the beams lighted the road ahead, threw the garden hedge below into sharp relief, and flashed upon the side of the house and the window at which he stood. Involuntarily he stepped back, and, almost simultaneously, it seemed, the answering beam flashed out.
It -appeared to start from somewhere just below his window, a nearly parallel bar of intense light,
like a searchlight beam. , It seemed to focus on the car and to blot out the headlights. He could see, as clear as day, the outline of a large limousine, saw the front wheels wobble, heard the screech of brakes suddenly applied, saw the car make a violent swerve--. Then the beam vanished as suddenly as it had come ; the headlights flashed again erratically ; there was a crash in the distance, a shout or two, and then silence. And, as he stared in amazement, one headlight vanished, and the beam from the other pointed lip obliquely in the air, where it remained stationary, a tapering pillar of light.
Hardy's throat and mouth had become suddenly dry. He tried to moisten his lips with a tongue that felt like blotting paper.
" Gawd!" he said, and then, again, " Gawd ! Beads of perspiration stood out on his _forehead.
The searchlight beam had, undoubtedly, come-from the room below. le\A ,fr
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He saw the car make a vii,kift swerve."
His recollection of subsequent events is somewhat !ragnientary and confused. He remembers creeping, n his stockinged feet; downatairs to the room below.
He has a vague recollection of a locked door, which, somehow, he burst open, and, of a dimly lighted rciem, into which he stumbled awkwardly. There is photographed in his mind the picture of an old man, with long, snow-white hair, bonding over some sort of electrical apparatus, who leapt backwards with an angry shout as he blundered in upon him. Then there comes a blinding flash and a shattering explosion, and he remembers nothing more, until he woke up in hospital with a splitting headache and a bandage round his head.
. It took some weeks to piece all the evidence, together. It so happened that the occupants of the limousine were none of them badly injured, and amongst them was Rockhurst, the sporting journalist. He it was who recognized in the white-haired old man —who, hoist with his own petard, bad killed himself when injuring Driver Hardy—the embittered old inventor Bland.
At one time , wellknown in horsey circles as the inventor of a patent horseshoe, from which he had hoped to make a fortune, he had seen all his prospects dashed to the ground by the advent and rapid de-. velopment of the motor vehicle. For some years nothing had been heard of him, and we can only assume that, in retirement somewhere, be brooded over his misfortunes. It is charitable to assume that this constant brooding had nainated in a kind of mania and an insatiable
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That, at any rate, seems to be the only ex planation for the diabolical thoroughness of the manner in which he had prepared to play the nefarious role of a roadside wrecker. It transpired that he had taken the corner house, in which Hardy had met with his astounding experiences, only a month or so before. The explosion which put an end to the old inventor had also shattered his apparatus, but, from pieces of wreckage, experts were of the opinion that it consisted of a small but terrifically powerful searchlight, for which his house lighting set supplied the current. Such is the theory which seems to provide the only probable solution of the mysterious affair. Driver Hardy recovered eventually, and is little the worse for his adventure ; but he still manifeets a decided disinclination to start off on a long night run. R.H.G.