Around the World in 100 Days (18 page)

Harry put a hand on friend's shoulder. “No, lad, no. You were only trying to protect the
Flash
. I'd have done the same thing. Poor Hardiman. It appears we may have been wrong about him. Now he'll have to try to explain to his father why he quit. I don't envy him.” Harry could imagine all too well how a chap might feel, returning to London without having proven a thing, either to himself or to his father.

TWENTY-TWO
In which

T
he following morning they left Ogden behind at last, but Harry continued to cling close to the railroad. According to the owner of the livery stable, the land that lay between here and San Francisco was mostly desert, with nothing resembling a real town, only a few gold-mining camps. If they ran into trouble, the railroad would be their only lifeline.

They had loaded the motorcar down with extra cans of kerosene and water. Though they were within sight of the Great Salt Lake for most of the day, they couldn't draw water from it; the high concentration of salt would have played havoc with the boiler and the pipes.

The land was almost completely barren. They passed at least a dozen bleached skeletons of horses and mules and oxen that had perished trying to haul some gold seeker's wagon to California or Nevada. To block the sun, they raised the leather rain hood of the
Flash,
but it turned the interior of the car into an oven.

Harry handed the wheel over to Johnny and caught a few hours of fitful, sweaty sleep. Around dusk, he took over and drove through the night, stopping only once to take on water from a railroad storage tank. Late the next day, they reached the Humboldt River. It wasn't much compared with the broad Platte, which they had followed through Nebraska; still, after three hundred miles of parched land it was a welcome sight. Since they were nearly out of kerosene, they filled the storage box with birch and juniper twigs for fuel.

Harry considered driving through the night again, but the carbide for the lamps was running low, too; so was his energy. With only four days left before the ship sailed for Hong Kong, he couldn't afford to fall sick again. They camped by the Humboldt and in the morning followed the river westward. After another night spent in the wild, they reached Reno, a busy mining town at the foot of the Sierra Nevadas. The mountains promised to be a bit of a struggle, but after that it should be a quick and easy run to San Francisco. According to Harry's reckoning they still had two days to get there.

They had their first decent meal in days, and Elizabeth filed her first dispatch since leaving Ogden, then they climbed aboard the
Flash
again. As in the Appalachians and the Rockies, the only practical route over the Sierras was the one laid out by the railroad. They passed through a landscape of such rugged, breath-stopping beauty that Elizabeth exclaimed, “Oh, look!” at least once every ten minutes. Harry couldn't look for long, lest he drive off the railroad ties.

Trains were scarcer out here than in the Eastern states—luckily, since the roadbed was seldom wide enough to accommodate both a motorcar and a train. They spent most of their time either bumping along over insubstantial-looking trestles that spanned sickeningly deep gorges or else creeping through incredibly long, dark tunnels carved from solid rock.

Near the summit, the tracks were enclosed by a series of long, low sheds designed to keep the route clear of snow. These shelters created a wooden tunnel that stretched, unbroken, for miles. “Well,” said Harry, “here's a poser. If we meet a train inside there, we'll have nowhere to go. And there's no telling when the next one will turn up.”

“Of course there is,” said Elizabeth. “It's called a timetable.”

“Unfortunately, I didn't think to get one.”

“Fortunately”—with a flourish, she produced a crumpled railroad schedule from her reticule—“I did.”

“Good thinking,” said Harry.

Elizabeth shrugged. “I take no credit for it. Charles left it in his room; I merely picked it up.”

According to the timetable, the next train wasn't due for two hours. “So unless those sheds stretch on for twenty miles,” said Harry, “we should make it through easily.”

“Assuming the
Flash
doesn't break down,” said Elizabeth.

“There's no reason she should. Is there, Johnny?”

“I—I don't know,” murmured the mechanic.

Elizabeth placed a hand on his shoulder. “You're still having that feeling, aren't you? That there's something wrong with the car.”

Almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

“Well, if she does plan to break down,” said Harry, “I hope she holds off until we're in the open again.” Taking a deep breath, he drove forward, into the mouth of the first shelter. A little sun seeped through the cracks between the boards, but not enough to see the tracks clearly. It was hard for Harry to keep the wheels on the ties.

“Can't you go any faster?” said Elizabeth anxiously.

“No!” snapped Harry. His voice echoed from the wooden walls. “Sorry,” he said more softly. “I'm doing the best I can.”

There didn't seem to be enough air inside the shelters; Harry found himself struggling to catch his breath. The
Flash
seemed to be chuffing more heavily than usual, too, but perhaps it was just due to the echo. When one shed ended, there was a bright gap several feet wide before the next began. Harry stopped in one of these, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, and asked, “How much time do we have?”

Elizabeth checked her watch. “We've been in here only twenty minutes.”

“It seems like an hour,” said Harry. “I hope the trains are running on schedule. And I hope your watch is correct.” He drove on, peering into the gloom for any hint of a locomotive's headlamp.

At last they emerged from the succession of sheds, squinting in the sunlight like miners surfacing after a long shift underground. The western slope of the Sierras lay spread before them and, in the distance, the broad green Sacramento Valley. “My goodness,” said Elizabeth. “Look at this.”

“I know, I know,” said Harry. “It's beautiful. But I need to keep my eyes on the tracks.”

“I wasn't referring to the scenery,” said Elizabeth. “I've just glanced at the receipt given me by the telegraph clerk in Reno. I dated my dispatch the third of September.”

“So?”

“So, this receipt is dated September fourth.”

“Well, I'm sure your editor will forgive you for—” Harry broke off suddenly. “Wait a moment.
This
is the fourth?
Today?
”

“If Western Union is correct.”

Harry's stomach lurched, but he tried to remain calm. “Would you please look at the steamship schedule and see when our ship departs for Hong Kong?”

Elizabeth consulted the table on the back of the train schedule. “Let me see. The
City of Peking
, right? It sets sail at two P.M. on . . . on Saturday, the fifth.” She paused, then added, in a puzzled tone, “But—but that's—”

Harry nodded grimly. “That's tomorrow.”

“Oh, dear.”

“If we miss it, how long must we wait for another?”

“The next ship for Hong Kong sails on . . . September twenty-eighth.”

Harry gave a tortured groan. “That's more than three weeks! We can't afford to lose three weeks!”

“But surely we can't make it to San Francisco by two o'clock tomorrow. Can we?”

Harry took a deep breath, then turned to deliver his trademark grin. “Well, if you'll pardon my language,” he said, “we can give it a demmed good try.”

Now that they were on the downhill side of the Sierras, Harry abandoned the tracks in favor of the wagon road. Though it had been impossibly narrow and rocky all the way through the mountains, the road was gradually becoming wider and smoother.

Harry turned the wheel over to Johnny. “I'd better get some sleep. We'll have to travel all night.”

Elizabeth let him have the rear seat. “Don't worry,” she said. “I promise I shan't try to drive again.”

By the time they reached Sacramento, the sun had been up for hours. They had plenty of kerosene, so Harry stopped only long enough to bolt down some breakfast in the dining room of Ebner's Hotel. “If you don't mind,” said Elizabeth, “I'd like to freshen up a bit.”

Harry wasn't sure just what freshening up entailed, but he didn't think it polite to ask. “All right. Ten minutes, no more.” As he left the hotel, carrying a plate of food for Johnny, he glanced at the clock behind the desk. Eight-fifteen. “Is that correct?” he asked the clerk.

“Yes, sir.”

The steamer for Hong Kong would depart at two o'clock. That gave them almost six hours. “How far to San Francisco?”

“A hundred miles, if you go the long way, around the Bay. If you take the road to Oakland and catch a ferry, you'll cut off a good twenty miles.”

Johnny had kept up a good head of steam, so the
Flash
was ready to travel the moment Elizabeth turned up. But the ten minutes she had been granted turned into fifteen, then twenty, and still she did not appear. “Where the deuce can she be?” said Harry. “It can't possibly take
that
long to freshen up, can it?”

“I don't know,” said Johnny.

When another ten minutes went by, Harry could bear it no longer. “I'm going to look for her. If she comes back here in the meantime, give a blast on the whistle.”

No one in the hotel had seen her since she left the dining room. A maid checked the women's lounge; it was empty. Baffled, Harry returned to the car. “No sign of her?” Johnny shook his head. “The devil take it!” said Harry. “What do we do now?”

“We can't leave her.”

“We can't miss that ship, either!” Harry paced back and forth, clenching and unclenching his fists. “She said she'd be no hindrance. She said that if she was, we could go on without her. That's what she said. So. If she doesn't show within the next ten minutes, we're going. She can catch up by train.”

“But what if . . . what if she's in trouble?”

“Johnny, she went to freshen up! What could possibly happen? She got a tangle in her hair? One of her buttons fell off?”

When Elizabeth failed to meet her second deadline, Harry said, “We should go.”

Johnny made no reply.

“We should just leave,” said Harry.

No reply.

“We're running out of time!” Despite his protests, Harry was feeling more anxious than angry. What if something
had
happened to Elizabeth? Sacramento was a gold-mining town, after all; it surely had a large contingent of thieves and ruffians—and worse.

As always, a crowd began gathering to gawk at the marvelous machine. And as always, a policeman turned up to see what all the commotion was about. As Harry was about to report Elizabeth's mysterious disappearance, he heard his name called and turned to see her striding toward them, looking distraught. “Here I am! I'm so sorry!”

“Where have you
been
?” demanded Harry.

“Don't be angry,” she said breathlessly. “I couldn't help it. Someone stole my handbag.” She addressed the policeman. “Officer, a thief snatched my handbag. It contained all my money—several hundred dollars, at least. I pursued him for what seemed like miles, but couldn't manage to catch him. All I managed to do was get lost.” She turned to Harry and Johnny again. “I'm sorry, fellows, truly I am. You must have been frantic.”

The policeman advised her to come to the station house and file a report, but she refused. “These gentlemen simply must reach San Francisco by two o'clock. I've cost them enough time already. I'm sure there's no hope of recovering the bag, in any case.”

“Well, probably not,” the officer admitted. “But—”

“Then let's go!” She sprang into the front seat of the
Flash
. “Harry! Johnny!”

Harry gave an exasperated sigh. The woman was impossible. After holding up their departure for nearly an hour, she had the gall to tell
them
to hurry?

Though they did save twenty or thirty miles by heading straight to Oakland, they saved no time. The road was narrow and winding and Harry had to drive at a maddeningly slow pace. Elizabeth repeated at least four or five times how sorry she was for making them lose an hour.

“It wasn't your fault,” said Harry at last.

“It was foolish of me to chase the blackguard, I suppose. But as I said, the bag contained all my money.”

“Surely the
Graphic
will wire you enough for your passage?”

“I hope so.”

Halfway to Oakland, they lost an hour waiting to be ferried across the Sacramento River. The ferry across San Francisco Bay made them wait even longer. By the time Harry drove onto the San Francisco docks, it was nearly two o'clock. “What pier do we want?” he asked Elizabeth.

“Oh, bless me!” She put a hand to her mouth in distress. “The timetable!”

“What?”

“It was in my bag!”

“What was the name of the ship?”

“It was . . . Oh, I can't remember!”

“The
City of Peking
,” said Johnny.

“Good lad!” To a passing ship's officer, Harry shouted, “Where do I find the
City of Peking
, bound for Hong Kong?”

“Hong Kong, is it?” The man rubbed pensively at his chin, while Harry squirmed impatiently. “That'll be Pier Thirty or Thirty-One, most likely. Down that way, at any rate. Say, what sort of motorcar is that, anyway?”