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She spent hours at the windows, fascinated by the stone and steel city that lay just below with the incredible blue of the sail-dotted lake beyond, and at night, with the lights spangling the velvety blackness, the flaring blaze of Thirty-first Street's chop-suey restaurants and moving picture houses at the right; and far, far away, the red and white eye of the lighthouse winking, blinking, winking, blinking, the rumble and clank of a flat-wheeled Indiana avenue car, the sound of high laughter and a snatch of song that came faintly up to her from the speeding car of some midnight joy-riders!
She now was proprietress of the road-house in the note described as Kessler's Café. It was a place for joy-riders. There was a cabaret, a hall for public dancing, and rooms for very private suppers. In so far as it welcomed only those who could spend money it was exclusive, but in all other respects its reputation was of the worst.
The catastrophe had taken but an instant. The three were alone, and their machine disabled almost in a breath. Merkle inquired anxiously if Lorelei were hurt; the chauffeur ran after the offending car, yelling anathemas into the night. He returned slowly, mopping his face, which had been cut by fragments from the shattered windshield. "Joy-riders," he muttered.
"'Perhaps if you don't mind, Richard, he said, 'you could lend me an overcoat. People are quite content to accept us as night joy-riders, but I am scarcely respectable for anything in the shape of a close examination. "Then I saw that he was all over blood on one side. Katharine took him away and sponged him, although he laughed at it.
Oh, but it was clean, and sweet, and wonderfully still, that rose-and-white room at Norah's! No street cars to tear at one's nerves with grinding brakes and clanging bells; no tramping of restless feet on the concrete all through the long, noisy hours; no shrieking midnight joy-riders; not one of the hundred sounds which make night hideous in the city.
A couple of rare old sports, them two, with no more worries for what might happen to their necks than if they'd been joy-riders speedin' home at 3 A.M. from the Pink Lady Inn. Me, I was holdin' my breath and waitin' for the grand smash. If Auntie's driver had stuck to a straightaway run we'd either caught 'em or smeared ourselves against a beer truck or something.
It was but a step from the crumbling Hotel St. Louis, and but another or so from the spires of St. Louis Cathedral. In it, at a round table, the joy-riders had passed the evening of their holiday. As the cathedral clock struck nine they rose to part. At the board Chester had sat next the same joy-mate allowed him all day in the car. But with how reduced a share of her attention!
One August a few years ago I set out with some friends for a two weeks' automobile trip into the land of Dixie joy-riders with a luxurious outfit calculated to be proof against any form of discomfort. We were headed for the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. I confess that mountains and men that do not smoke suit me better.
So the girls told her about their weird experience of the night before, all talking at once and making it as hard as possible for Mrs. Gilligan to understand what it was all about. "A noise that sounded like a motor car," she said, when they had finished and had paused for lack of breath. "Well, I don't see what's so very queer about that. May have been some joy-riders or something."
As they shifted to the side of the highway they heard the sound of singing from the rear, mingling with the exhaust from a car. "Elmwood Hall fellows," spoke Tom briefly, as he recognized one of the school songs. "I wonder who they are?" "Don't know," answered Bruce. "Joy-riders, I guess. The fellows are getting more and more sporty every year." "Get out!" laughed Tom.
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