Part 2

"Oh," he grunted. There were times when he realized that Woody lived in a world completely different from his own, and this was one of them.

"Never mind," said Mrs. Hartford comfortingly. "Mary Jane's a sensible girl. She'll see things in their right light after a while. Your father and I had many misunderstandings before we were married."

"Yes," said Woody gloomily. "But there wasn't a Bob Peters with a yellow Buick convertible hanging around in the background."

"As I recall it," said Mr. Hartford, "there was a young medical student by the name of Saunders who drove a Stutz Bearcat. But for my happy intervention, my boy, you might be the son of a doctor, devoting your life to the dissection of frogs."

Mrs. Hartford laughed, and for a moment she seemed, even to Woody, a young girl.

Woody was up at four in the morning and met Steve and Worm at the garage. Steve had brought two stop watches as promised, and everything was ready, including the sandwiches that Mrs. Hartford had prepared for the three of them. It took six hours in the Dodge to get to the Mojave salt lake where Cindy Lou was to undergo her trials. Nobody else was there, and during the last-minute preparations for the first run even Worm seemed a little nervous. The cold spark plugs were put in after Worm had gapped them properly; Woody drained the fuel from Cindy Lou's tank and poured in his special dope.

When all was ready, Woody got into the hot rod, which, after a complaining cough and a whirr or two, fired up.

"Warm her oop a little," said Worm. "Mon, dinna' ye install yer safety belt?"

"Sure," said Woody. "It's on the floor." He buckled it around him and squirmed into as comfortable a position as possible behind the wheel.

"Everybody knows what he's got to do?" he said. "Steve, you stand by the starting line. Worm's going to be at the half-mile mark. Don't watch me. Watch Worm. The moment I start to move, press the stop watch. When I pass the half-mile mark, Worm will bring down the checkered flag. Stop the watch right then. Maybe we ought to try it a couple of times to see if everybody understands."

He made two trial runs, not pressing Cindy Lou but giving her a chance to warm up. Everything went as planned.

"Swell," said Woody, "this time it's for real. Ready?" Steve nodded, and Woody brought Cindy Lou to the starting line. He stopped her dead, and then, with a slight nod of his head, slipped her in low and stepped on the gas. The take-off flung him back against the seat. The flat salt bed of the desert sped beneath him like a gleaming white ribbon. Woody looked at the speedometer. Forty-five. Fifty. Fifty-five. Sixty. Sixty-five. He slammed the clutch down and flung the gearshift back toward him. Cindy Lou seemed to leave the ground in a clean leap forward. Woody grinned. Smooth as silk and swift as an arrow. Boy what a rod, he thought. He hardly saw Worm as he flashed by. It took him a mile across the salt flats to slow down. When he got back Steve said, "Twenty seconds."

"That's an average of ninety miles an hour over the half mile from a standing start," said Woody. "Man, she goes like a bird. But she ought to do better than that. This time I'll really pour the coal to her."

The second run showed an average of ninety-two miles an hour from the standing start.

"Try her over the mile," Steve suggested. "Then you can see what she'll do when she has time to get rolling."

Woody waited until Worm had driven out to the mile mark in the Dodge and waved his flag to show he was ready. Then he took off again. This time he decided that he'd wind Cindy Lou up real tight in low as fast as he could, and jam her into high with his foot all the way down on the accelerator. The hot rod fled down the salt flat with a defiant snarling roar. For the split second when she was in neutral between gear shifts, it seemed to Woody she would shake herself to pieces. Then he flipped her into high and again experienced that clean lancing forward as the gear took hold.

With the accelerator all the way down it seemed as if Worm and the ground he stood upon were being flung toward him. Then, from the engine by his side, came a strange and ominous sound. It started as nothing more than a heavy knocking but in seconds was as if forty blacksmiths were beating on a boiler with sledge hammers. Cindy Lou slowed down so fast that it seemed as if her brakes had seized. Woody slipped her into neutral and turned off the ignition. The clanging and hammering stopped immediately.

Worm came loping up. "What happened, laddie?" he asked.

"I don't know," Woody said. "She just blew up."

"Turn her over," said Worm. Woody pressed the starter, and the grinding and banging started immediately. Worm got down and looked under Cindy Lou.

"Connecting rod," he said. "A piece of it has come clear through the pan. Yere oil's leaking oot. Worse than that. It must have broken through the cylinder wall. There's water wi' the oil."

He looked at Woody and decided not to say anything more. There was nothing more that could be said. Cindy Lou was a wreck. She'd need a completely new engine if she was ever to run again.

They towed her home in silence.

3

Woody was so depressed after Cindy Lou threw a connecting rod during the trial runs at the salt lakes that neither Worm nor Steve could do or say anything to cheer him up. It is possible that Mary Jane might have been able to remove his depression, for part of it at least stemmed from the quarrel between them. But if Mary Jane knew anything of Woody's troubles, she left him severely alone. Woody heard through Steve that she was going around with Bob Peters, and he wondered at times whether he ought not to go around to Bob Peters and punch him on the nose.

"I'd sure feel a lot better," he told Steve, "if I punched him right in the snoot."

Steve was somewhat undersized, a freckled, sandy-haired youth who was growing a mustache distinguishable only because it made him look as though there was something wrong with his upper lip.

"You might feel better right when you punched him," Steve said. "But one second later you might not feel so good. That Peters is a pretty big guy."

"Just a sack of hog fat," said Woody savagely. "Coming right here with my girl so she could see me handing over the ten bucks to him that I was supposed to take her out with."

"Well, maybe he did," said Steve. "But you gotta admit it was you who made the deal."

"Say, whose side you on anyway?" Woody asked fiercely.

"Yours, pal," said Steve. "But you won't get anywhere blaming other people for what you did. Anyway, that's all over. Did you take the head off Cindy Lou and see how much damage had been done?" For answer Woody reached up to a shelf above his work bench and threw Steve a piston. Part of a connecting rod was fastened to it, but it was snapped off in the middle and twisted like a stick of liquorice.

"Gee," said Steve, deeply impressed. "Sure made a mess of that."

"You should look at the cylinder," said Woody. "There's a hole in the cylinder wall big enough for an elephant to get through." He led Steve over to a corner of the garage where the engine block of Cindy Lou lay on the floor. There was a rent in one of the cylinder walls and deep score marks on two others.

"What did Worm say caused it?" Steve asked.

"Jeepers, I know what caused it," said Woody. "The connecting rod snapped in that cylinder, and I busted some rings in those other two. That's what caused it."

"Don't get sore, pal," said Steve. "I know that's what caused it. Any kid in the block can tell you that. But why did the connecting rod pop? What does Worm say?"

"He says it popped because it wasn't according to Davie's _Problems and Principles of Internal Combustion Engines_," snarled Woody.

"That's right," said Worm coming up unexpectedly. "There's a sweet little chapter in there that will tell ye all aboot it. Noo, frae the look of that I'd say that yere crankshaft was no properly in balance--just enough to set up a bit of a whip in yon connecting rod. Though it's possible the metal was a mite tired. Ye're lucky it did'na go clean through the block and spray ye wi' scalding water and hot oil. But dinna worrit. Nae doot one day ye'll get another and do the same foolish thing all over again."

Woody, however, for the time being had had enough of hot rods. Every time he looked at Cindy Lou or at the engine block lying disconsolate on the garage floor, he felt sick. In the end, he decided to sell what he could of her. He'd spent a total of four hundred dollars on the car, not counting innumerable hours of his own labor. Disposed of piecemeal, he got back eighty, reselling the carburetor manifold to Bob Peters for eight dollars. He wasn't very happy when he heard that Bob sold it a week later for much more.

With the eighty dollars he decided that he'd better try to patch things up with Mary Jane. The point was, should he buy her a present and call on her, or should he telephone her and get a date and then turn up with a present?

He decided to telephone, and it was just as well, because she wasn't in. She wasn't in when he called the next day either, though her mother, Mrs. Jackson, sounded encouraging.

"I think she'll be in in a few minutes," she said. "Mary Jane just went down to the library."

"Gee, is she still reading those swell Huxley books?" asked Woody, determined to ingratiate himself wherever he might.

"Huxley?" said Mrs. Jackson. "No. It's not Huxley, Woody. The last book she had was called, I think, _The Philosophy of Salesmanship_. She's become very interested in selling lately. Last night she gave her father quite a questioning on whether he was carrying sufficient insurance."

"Oh," groaned Woody. "Well, thanks, Mrs. Jackson."

"Shall I tell her you'll call again when she comes in?" Mrs. Jackson asked.

"No," said Woody. "I don't think I will, Mrs. Jackson."

"All right," said Mrs. Jackson. "I think I understand."

The next day Steve called him up. Steve was worried about Woody's attitude, which was very gloomy, and had devised a plan that he hoped would cheer him up.

"Listen," he said. "Got a real good deal for us. There's a tech inspection for the sports cars for the Torrey Pines race tonight. How about going along? Lots of cars of all kinds. Ferraris, Maseratis, Austin Healeys, Jags, TR2's. What d'ya say?"

"Mickey Mouse stuff," was Woody's reply.

"What d'ya mean, Mickey Mouse stuff?" demanded Steve.

"There isn't enough horsepower in any one of them to go over a cardboard box without changing gears," said Woody scornfully.

"I got news for you," said Steve. "One of the Type D Jags at the Le Mans race recently developed two hundred and eighty-five horsepower with a two hundred and ten cubic-inch engine. And it was running on just plain old gasoline. You know any hot rods can do that?"

Woody admitted that he didn't.

"Well, you want to come and see these little bugs, or aren't you interested in anything that hasn't got an engine big enough to drive a tank?"

"I guess I can take a look at them," Woody said grudgingly.

"I was hoping you'd see it that way, on account of I need a ride."

"Just a minute," said Woody. "What kind of a deal is this? I haven't got any transportation."

"I know you haven't, pal," replied Steve. "But if you're going, you can talk Worm into taking us there. Tell him every one of these cars was built by a guy who studied under Davie that wrote the book on internal combustion engines. S'long."

Worm, however, was strangely hesitant about going to the technical inspection. He displayed an odd mixture of keenness and reluctance, as if half of him was excited at the prospect and half of him deeply disturbed. His long fingers trembled slightly as he lit his cigarette, and it took him two matches to achieve the task.

"Och," he said finally, looking queerly at Woody, "I wish ye'd said naething of it tae me."

Woody thought that Worm was merely reluctant to take them there in his car but, priding himself on the generosity of the Highland Scots, did not wish to appear stingy.

"Gee, Worm," he said, "if you don't want to take the Dodge, Steve and I can find some other way of getting there."

"It's nae that, laddie," replied Worm, remarkably serious even for him. "It's nae that at all. It's something I had put oot of my mind a long time ago, and I dinna ever want it to come back again. And here it is." In his distress his Scots brogue grew thicker. Woody couldn't make any sense at all of what he was saying.

"Skip it," said Woody. "It isn't that important."

"It's nae so easily skipped, laddie," said Worm and went into his office.

Woody returned to his work of grinding valves, a task that demanded all his care. By the time he was done, he had all but forgotten his date with Steve and his strange conversation with Worm. Indeed it was nearly time to close down the shop, and it was Worm who reminded him of his appointment.

"Meet me here after dinner," he said. "I'll take ye tae the tech inspection. It's a thing I must do."

After dinner he was back at the garage to find Worm there dressed in a clean suit of coveralls. He had a box of tools with him, and Woody was surprised that he hadn't changed into his ordinary clothing and should have the tools with him. However, he said nothing to him about it. On the way, Steve did most of the talking. He explained that the inspection had two main purposes. The first was to see that all the sports cars entered for the race were in perfect mechanical condition. Every feature would be checked for safety, from the seal of the gas-tank cap to the amount of tread on the tires.

"Man," he said, "they really give them the works on that safety check. They go over everything with a fine-tooth comb--safety belts, brakes, brake lights in the rear, steering-wheel play, anything dangling underneath that might give trouble--they don't miss a thing. I've seen guys ruled out because their spare tires were a little worn. It's kind of hard to get tires for some of those foreign jobs in a hurry."

The second purpose of the inspection was to ensure that cars racing "stock," that is, without any changes from the factory model, hadn't been secretly souped up in some way to give the driver an advantage over his rivals.

"You take air filters," he said. "If the factory in England or France puts a particular kind of air filter on the car, that's the one it's got to race with. The same kind of filter may be available over here. Looks the same and does the job no better and no worse. But if it isn't the factory filter, the car can't race as a stock model."

"Heck," said Woody disgusted, "if they can't soup them up, what fun is it? Any stock car will turn in about the same performance as another from the same factory."

"Tuning, driving skill, experience, and guts, that's what makes the difference," said Steve. "Wait until you see these babies race. It isn't like Indianapolis, where they just go round in a circle as hard as they can lick. Once you get into high gear at Indianapolis, you stay there until the race is over. These boys race on tracks that are full of hairpin bends, S-bends, and right-angle corners. They have to know when to shift down and when to shift up. They have to know how to shoot a blind corner so as to skid round it and still stay on the track. It's no game for sissies. You get into a hairpin with a cloud of Jags and Ferraris steaming around you and about three inches to maneuver in, and you learn how to say your prayers all over again."

It was not hard to find the building in which the technical inspection was being held. The streets for several blocks around were jammed with sports cars of every make. It was as if some kind of automobile carnival was being held. There was a tenseness and excitement in the air that was infectious. From being slightly scornful of all the proceedings, Woody found himself increasingly interested in the cars and the people who drove them, and a little ashamed of his previous "Mickey Mouse" label.

With Steve he sauntered over to a green MG whose owner was screwing an air filter in place. He was surprised at the size of the engine. It didn't look powerful enough to run a lawn mower.

"What will it do?" Woody asked.

"Ninety. Maybe ninety-five when she's wound up real right."

"With that?" asked Woody in surprise, pointing to the little four-cylinder engine.

"Sure," replied the owner. "Never seen one of these babies before, huh? What do you drive?"

"Used to drive a hot rod," said Woody.

"Me, too," replied the other. "But when I found out about these I switched. That little engine there has a displacement of just under fifteen hundred cc.'s--"

"What's cc.'s?" asked Woody.

"Cubic centimeters. One thousand cc.'s is sixty-one cubic inches. In other words, with a displacement of around ninety cubic inches, she develops sixty-five horsepower. That's darn close to three quarters of a horsepower for every cubic inch of piston displacement. Not bad, huh?"

Woody admitted that it wasn't bad at all.

"Some of the Jags will turn out one point three six hp. per cubic inch," the MG owner said. "That's on gasoline. That's better than those Offeuhausers do at Indianapolis using gas, alcohol, and nitro."

"Let's go look at some of the Jags and Ferraris," said Steve. "Say, what happened to Worm?"

"Probably crawling around under one of these buggies," said Woody. "I don't think he's ever really happy unless he's got crankcase oil dripping in his face. He brought his tools along."

"There he is," said Steve. "Talking to that little guy over there."

They pushed their way over through a tangle of cars, drivers, and mechanics. The cars looked mostly like toys to Woody, but he had an increasing respect for them. Worm was talking excitedly to the other man. The two seemed to be old friends, and this surprised Woody, for he hadn't known that Worm had any close friends, particularly in sports-car circles.

"Gee," the stranger was saying as they approached, "I haven't clapped eyes on you in ten years. What are you doing with yourself these days?"

"Running my own shop and service station," said Worm.

"Anything else?" said the other.

"Nae," Worm replied.

The stranger looked at him in silence for a minute. There seemed to be some understanding between the two of them that Woody could not fathom.

"Like you tae meet me friends," Worm said, catching sight of them and breaking the awkward silence. "Woody Hartford and Steve Phillips. Meet Captain Jim Randolph."

"Randy for short," said the stranger, holding out his hand. Randy was one of the smallest men Woody had ever met. He was slim, fair-haired, and almost boyish in appearance. There were wrinkles of humor around his blue eyes, and he sported a mustache that would have done credit to a guardsman. Woody guessed that he was British--either Canadian or English.

"You the same Captain Randolph that drove with the Morgan team in the last Le Mans?" asked Steve.

"That's me," said Randy.

"Boy, you must have got a kick out of that," said Steve.

Randy nodded. "It was a lot of fun," he said quietly.

"What are ye driving noo?" asked Worm. Randy's whole face brightened.

"Something absolutely new," he said. "I was awfully lucky to get it. It's the only one in the country, and none of them have been raced before. Come along and take a look." Without waiting for a reply, he led them down the road to the back of a large building where the technical inspection was being held. There was a crowd of drivers and mechanics gathered around a car parked in the rear of the building, and it was difficult to get through them. When they did, Woody found himself looking at an automobile like something out of the next century.

The body was gleaming black, and the hood shaped like the nose of a shark. There was no radiator, the big wheels had wire spokes, and the dashboard had so many instruments on it that it looked like the cockpit of an airplane. Randy pushed his way to the back, the drivers and mechanics around making room for him, and opened what should have been the luggage compartment.

"Rear-opposed engine, air cooled, twelve cylinders, four thousand cc.'s. Develops three hundred horsepower at just under six thousand revolutions per minute," he said.

"Wow," said Woody. "What do they call her?"

"She's made by Milano of Italy, and she's called the Black Tiger," Randy replied.

Woody sighed. Here was a real dream car. No other car could ever take its place for him. But he would never have anything to do with it, let alone drive it. The thought left him vaguely unhappy.

4

There are certain cars that those who love automobiles fall in love with at first sight. The Black Tiger was just such a car for Woody. For the next few days he could do little but think of it. He longed to be associated with it, even in the humblest way. He would have cheerfully washed and polished the Black Tiger for nothing more than the privilege of being able to look it over in detail, from the small compact wicked-looking power plant in the rear to the sable tiger emblem, set on a field of silver on the front of the hood.

It would have been heaven to be behind the wheel of the Black Tiger, a racing helmet and goggles on his head, taking her down the straightaway of a race track at full throttle.

He besieged Worm with questions about the Black Tiger, and Worm told him a great deal about European sports cars of all kinds. Worm seemed to be familiar with every kind of car that had ever been manufactured, and Woody was abashed to discover that in Worm's opinion the kind of mechanical work they were doing in the garage was closer, as he put it, to butchery than surgery.

"These buckets o' bolts don't call for a real mechanic," Worm said. This so annoyed Woody that he protested American cars were acknowledged the finest in the world.

"Aye," said Worm, "for what they're built for--plenty of horsepower so ye don't have to change gear, fast getaway, and enough springing for a feather bed. Ye can no beat them there. But they'll no take a sharp corner fast. They carry aboot a ton of chrome fittings just tae make them look pretty. They'll nae gie ye more than twelve or fourteen miles tae a gallon of gas. Hoot mon. Do ye call it engineering when somebody builds a two-ton car to take a two-hundred-pound man tae work?"

That quieted Woody for a while, and he went back to his dream of the Black Tiger.

In the meantime, Mary Jane was beginning to find that the philosophy of salesmanship and the company of Bob Peters left something to be desired as a steady diet. It was fun, to be sure, to drive around town in a yellow Buick convertible with the wind whipping through her dark, curly hair. Bob had taken her out three times since their first date and each time for the kind of adult evening that she wished Woody would get interested in. The first time he'd taken her to a nice quiet place where there wasn't a juke box (always a mark of sophistication for Mary Jane) and then to a lecture at the civic auditorium. The lecture was given by the sales manager of a big rubber company, and he had discussed selling techniques for an hour and a half.

Bob had spent the hour and a half taking notes in a black notebook with his name in gold letters on the front of it. Mary Jane was slightly piqued because he hadn't said anything about her hair, which she had fixed specially for the evening. But she reminded herself that she was being childish and told Bob that she had found the lecture very exciting.

This had the effect of encouraging Bob to invite her to two more evenings of a similar nature. At one of them, a personnel manager had discussed factors in the making of young executives. Bob took notes on that too. At another, an advertising manager had discussed the results of an experiment in which five hundred people had been sent circulars in which they were promised a dollar if they returned the circular with their names and addresses on it.