Around the World in 100 Days (17 page)

By the next morning, he had improved enough that Elizabeth consented to let him ride in the
Flash
, provided Johnny did the driving. Harry had to admit that it was rather pleasant to stretch out in the rear seat—which fit him better than it did Johnny—and watch the vast sky unfold. Though the thin air was hard on his lungs, it gave free passage to the sun's rays, which warmed him despite the morning chill. Soothed by the soft, breathlike chuffing of the steam engine beneath him, he dozed off.

A few minutes later—or was it hours?—he was jarred awake by a sudden lurch of the motorcar and the sickening sound of metal being twisted and tortured. Harry raised his head and looked around, dazed and disoriented. He had been thrown from the seat and was lying on the floorboards. “What the deuce happened?”

There was no reply. By clinging to the seat back, Harry managed to get to his knees. Johnny was slumped forward, holding his head. Elizabeth was rubbing her chest, as though something had struck her. It took Harry a moment to realize that there was something wrong with the seating arrangement. Johnny was in the passenger seat; Elizabeth was behind the wheel. “What happened?” Harry repeated.

“We hit something,” muttered Johnny. He dabbed at his forehead with his bandanna. It came away spotted with blood.

Grimacing in pain, Elizabeth climbed from the car and surveyed the situation. “Now where did
that
come from?”

“What?” said Harry.

“It's a rather large boulder. I never even saw it.”

“Pardon me for asking, but why the devil were you
driving
?”

She shot him a fierce look. “Don't shout at me!”

“I wasn't shouting. I was merely asking. And I'll ask again: Why were you driving?”

“Because I wanted to, all right? I thought it might be fun and exciting.”

“Ah,” said Harry. “Well. I trust you weren't disappointed.” He turned to Johnny. “Let me see your forehead, lad.”

“Don't go chiding Johnny for letting me drive,” said Elizabeth. “He tried to talk me out of it.”

“I'm not blaming him.”

“Good. It was entirely my fault. I take full responsibility.”

“So you'll be repairing all the damage, then?”

She gave Harry a perturbed glance. “You know I can't do that. But I'll gladly pay for the repairs.”

“Wonderful. Now all we have to do is find a machine shop.” He gazed around at the desolate landscape. “Hmm. Surely there's one around here somewhere.”

“Don't be sarcastic.”

“At least I'm not shouting.”

Johnny climbed out and examined the crumpled front end of the
Flash
.

“How does she look?” asked Harry.

Johnny merely shook his head.

Elizabeth fetched the medical kit and set about bandaging Johnny's wound. “I'm very sorry you hit your head. You were right about it being hard to handle. I should have listened.” She attempted to lift Johnny's cap. With a small grunt of panic, he knocked her hand aside and pulled the cap down around his ears.

“Let me do that,” said Harry.

“I was only trying to help.”

“If you want to help, why don't you back the
Flash
away from that boulder?”

“I didn't think you'd want me to.”

“What more can you do? Run her over a cliff?” He showed her how to put the car in reverse and she backed it up a few yards.

Johnny crawled beneath the
Flash
to assess the damage. When he reappeared, his face was grim. “Condenser's caved in. Steering rod's bent.”

“Will she make it to the next town?” asked Harry.

“If a team of horses pulls her.”

“We can't do that. She has to go the whole way under her own power. Can you fix her well enough so she can be driven?”

“I can try.”

“Take a rest first, lad. You don't look well.”

Johnny ignored him. “We'll need a fire.”

“I can manage that, I think, if Elizabeth will gather the wood.”

“Don't talk about me as if I'm not here,” said Elizabeth. “I said I was sorry.”

“No, you didn't.”

“Yes, I did.”

“You said you were sorry Johnny hurt his head.”

“All right, then, I . . . I apologize for wrecking your motorcar. There. Are you satisfied?”

“More or less,” said Harry. “You know how important this is to me.”

“Yes, yes,” she replied, impatiently. “You've six thousand pounds riding on it.”

“It's more than that.”

“
More
than six thousand pounds?”

“No, I mean it's not just the money that's at stake.”

“Really.”

“Yes, really. Why don't you gather some wood while I get a fire started?”

When the wood had burned down to charcoal, Johnny buried the bent steering rod in it; using a small bellows, he heated the metal until it glowed, then carefully pounded it straight. “Good work, Johnny,” said Harry. “I don't suppose the condenser can be fixed?”

“Not here. I unhooked it.”

“We'll have to vent the steam, then, which means we'll run out of water pretty quickly.”

“How quickly?” asked Elizabeth.

“The water tank holds thirty gallons. That might get us forty or fifty miles.” Harry sighed. “I suppose we'd better wait until morning. It's nearly dark.”

While Johnny set up the tents, Elizabeth prepared a stew from bully beef and dried vegetables. All Harry could manage was to sit on the running board of the
Flash
and watch. “The fire feels good,” said Elizabeth. Harry didn't reply. “You're angry with me, aren't you?”

“No.”

“Yes, you are, and I don't blame you. I shouldn't have insisted on driving. It's just that . . . well, frankly, I resented the implication that only men can drive motorcars. I wanted to show you—and myself, I suppose—that it wasn't so.”

Harry laughed weakly. “It seems we all have something to prove, on this trip.”

Elizabeth held her hands up to the fire. The heat made her fingers, which hadn't healed yet, throb painfully. She thought about how gently Harry had bandaged the burn for her. She would never have guessed that he was capable of doing anything so carefully. “What you said before, about there being more at stake than just the money. What did you mean?” Harry didn't answer. “I know you want prove what motorcars can do. Is that what you meant?”

“Partly.”

“What else is at stake? Harry? What else?”

“I made a bargain,” he said. “With my father.”

“A bargain? What sort of bargain?”

“I promised that, if I lose the wager, I'll stop messing about with motorcars and take up some . . .
respectable
profession.”

“Something suitable for a gentleman, is that it?”

Harry nodded glumly.

“I've always hated it,” said Elizabeth, “when people told me I should behave more like a lady. I never considered the fact that men are expected to behave in a certain fashion as well.” She rested her back against the door of the
Flash
. The aluminum was warm from the fire. “So if you win, you'll just go on . . . how did you put it? Messing about?”

“I can't think of any career I could bear to be stuck in.”

“Well, if the
Flash
makes it around the world, everyone will want a vehicle just like her. You could always make a career out of building motorcars.”

“I'm no businessman. And all I know about machinery is what I've learned from working alongside Johnny on the
Flash
.”

“That's what engineering schools are for, Harry.”

“School? I wouldn't have the patience for it. I couldn't even make it through Eton.”

Elizabeth gazed at him curiously. “This isn't the Harry Fogg I know. I've never heard you sound anything but cocksure and confident.”

“I'm just being realistic. I'm not very good at sticking with things.”

“Well, then, I suppose you'll just have to go on messing about, won't you? Unless, of course, you lose the wager.”

“I won't lose.”

Elizabeth gave him an arch look. “That's what you said when you took on the electric motorcar.”

Ordinarily Elizabeth didn't hesitate to give herself a leading role in her newspaper stories, but in her account of the auto accident, she neglected for once to mention the major part she played:

Elizabeth tried to convince Harry, who was still far from well, to take a hotel room, but he refused. “We'll need the money later on,” he said. His pride wouldn't let him tell her—or Johnny—the whole truth: Even if he didn't spend another dime between Ogden and San Francisco, he would be hard-pressed to pay for their passage across the Pacific. If they traveled steerage, he might just be able to manage it—for all the good it would do. They could hardly expect to get through all of Asia and Europe with no money at all.

That was the worst part about being idle: all the problems that he had been so carefully ignoring now had a chance to rear their heads. One of the things he had ignored, in his rush to rack up the miles, was his mother. He had promised to wire her from time to time, to let her know he was still alive and well.

Elizabeth would have welcomed a cozy, clean hotel room, no matter what the cost. But she felt obliged to share the livery stable with the others, to demonstrate once again that she was no Miss Mollycoddle. After she had made herself more presentable, she announced, “I'm going to see whether the telegraph office is still open.”

“Would you mind sending a wire for me?” said Harry.

“If you're sure you trust me to do it properly.”

Harry grinned. “Just don't drive there, all right?”

Elizabeth couldn't suppress a smile. She drew out her notepad. “To whom shall I send it?”

“Aouda Fogg, Number Seven, Savile Row, London.”

She paused and gave him a curious glance. “Your mother? That's very thoughtful of you.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“Believe me, if I were being sarcastic, you'd know. What message would you like me to send?”

“I don't know. Something on the order of ‘Flash is holding up well, so am I, more later.'”

“Are you sure that's not too emotional? It may bring her to tears.”

“
Now
you're being sarcastic.”

“Just a little, perhaps.”

“Well, I don't know what to say. You're the writer; you think of something.”

The telegram she sent on his behalf read AM IN FINE HEALTH AND SPIRITS EXCEPT FOR MISSING YOU DEAR MOTHER YOUR LOVING SON HARI and it did, in fact, bring Aouda Fogg to tears.

Harry considered asking his mother to wire him a few hundred pounds. But he didn't want to give the impression that he was in trouble. Somehow or other he would come up with the money, he was certain of it. It was a pity Charles had turned out to be such a rotter. If he had stayed, he might have been persuaded to keep them in kerosene, at least.

Though Harry didn't like to admit it, he missed having Charles to keep track of all those niggling little details such as mileage and dates and the like. Harry was not good with details. He was, at least, fairly certain of the date. Back in Rawlins, they had determined that it was the twenty-sixth of August. That would make today the twenty-eighth, which gave them an entire week to reach San Francisco.

Unfortunately the repairs to the
Flash
ate up two of those seven days. By the second day, Harry was feeling like himself again—that is to say, so impatient that he could hardly bear it. To keep himself occupied, he removed the rear seat and set about cleaning the engine. Though Johnny had cast and machined all the parts with the utmost care, a little oil inevitably seeped from around the valves, and dust became caked on the cylinders.

As he wiped out the engine compartment, an object caught in the rag. Harry untangled the thing and examined it. “Johnny. Have a look at this.”

Johnny slid out from beneath the car. “What is it?”

“A fountain pen. Wonder how it got there.” Harry couldn't help noticing the guilty look on Johnny's lopsided face. “Do you know?”

Johnny nodded. “Hardiman said he lost it. I didn't believe him.”

“Ah. So when you caught him ‘red-handed,' he may not have been sabotaging the car at all? He may merely have been looking for his pen?”

“Maybe.” Johnny gave him an anxious glance. “Are you angry, Harry?”