heroic and sufficient. He had had faith in the stirring things to come, and in his ability to meet life's challenges boldly and with credit. He had even felt equal to defeat; and now

He felt curiously relieved to learn that there had been no hope from the start. Death was instantaneous! Had he turned back, the issue would have remained unchanged. The boy had been killed outright the question of what prompt aid would have accomplished was disposed of.

Never for a moment had he doubted that the accident was inevitable. He was running his car at a steady, easygoing pace; the victim had materialized out of thin air. Findlay had heard a cry, felt the sickening impact of collision with a human body, caught the sound of crashing glass, and the next thing he knew he found himself tearing past green fields, the paved streets of the city left far behind.

He felt, now, that if he were to live to be a hundred he would never forget that dreadful moment when he had brought his machine to an abrupt stop and faced the issue squarely. He, Peter Findlay, had knocked down a fellow human being and ridden away without so much as an impulse to turn back.

Peter Findlay always had prided himself upon his emotional restraint. He liked to put the emphasis on the canny side of his Scotch heritage; he liked to think of himself as temperate, wellpoised, undismayed by uncomfortable issues. In the quiet security of his very ordinary life, he had gone through rehearsals for brave performances with a preening confidence. His self-satisfied vision had pierced the mists of everyday experience and discerned a future

He picked up the paper again and reread every word of the precise news item. It was not the first time that he had read such an item. Indeed, he knew the formula by heart: The police are making a drastic search among the public garages and repair-shops of San Francisco for a gray touring-car with shattered headlights. Of course they were! But Peter Findlay was not a fool, even though he might be a coward. And in the absence of a worthy stimulus he began to have a sly satisfaction at the thought of how quickly he had anticipated the inevitable program.

When the first moment of realization had come, far out upon the lonely road where he had brought his machine to an abrupt stop, there had flared up a brief flame of passionate self-reproach which urged him to face about and meet the issue squarely without further compromise. The unleashed fear that gave an ugly lie to the fiction of his selfrestraint had spent itself in flight. He saw then that his action had been not only unworthy-it had been foolish; the accident was unavoidable; he was in no wise to blame; there had been not the slightest reason for flight.

But there had been nothing comforting in his belated reflections; instead, he had felt the chagrin of a thief captured by an obvious and bungling ruse, as if Fate suddenly had snared him with an empty pistol. And his back had stiffened with hollow spiritual bravado as pride succeeded blind instinct in the fight for his soul's pos

session.

With an empty pistol! The phrase struck him again with all its bitter irony as he scraped the sugar from the bottom

of his cup of coffee and beckoned the slovenly waiter. The man came forward, a greasy towel slung limply over one arm, his flat feet clicking noisily on the floor. Findlay ordered another dish of buttered toast. He was determined to be leisurely; he had been tricked into an emotional indiscretion for the first and last time, he told himself. Henceforth he intended to proceed calmly, refusing to be confused by the quick turns of circumstance. He was satisfied that at least he had retrieved some of his initial mistake by the clearmindedness of his following actions. Most men, he flattered himself, would have continued in a state of panic-run their tale-bearing car into a ditch and abandoned it, or done something equally foolish. Or they might even have been thoughtless enough to have returned to town and put into a repair-shop in the hope of quickly wiping out all evidence of a smash-up. But Peter Findlay knew a thing or two. He had kept on riding all night, slipping into the city at an early hour, casually, boldly, with the dust of the highway as evidence that he had come a long way.

Over the dregs of his coffee-cup he found heart to chuckle at the thought of thick-witted policemen making the rounds of all the public garages and repair-shops while the car they sought stood just outside an obscure Third Street coffee-house, a challenge to official stupidity.

He paid his bill and departed. The waiter, surprised at so unusual a thing as a tip, followed him to the door with a series of obsequious bows.

"I shouldn't have given a tip!" flashed through Findlay's mind. "I shouldn't have done anything to draw attention."

The man, shielding his eyes from a warm sun, walked toward the curb. "“Ah, you've had a smash-up!" he said. Findlay flushed. "Yes," he answered, as he climbed into the car.

The waiter began to circle inquisitively about, rubbing his fawning hands together. His little ferret-like eyes darted with malicious curiosity—at least so it seemed to Peter Findlay.

"What's wrong-what are you looking at?" The question snapped from

Findlay unawares. He was conscious of a raw edge of irritability in his tone. The waiter's glance of surprise_was succeeded by an insolent shrug. Peter Findlay started the engines and the car shot forward. His heart was beating violently. Could it be possible that he was getting the habit of emotional hysteria? he asked himself. He had eluded the temptation to indulge in a long and unconvincing explanation, only to succumb to an ill-timed exhibition of bad temper.

"I'll have to watch my step," he warned himself.

And at that moment he began to rehearse for the hundredth time the story he had prepared for his wife.

It was a clear morning-an unusual thing in San Francisco during midsummer. As a general rule the early hours of August days are shrouded in mists along the coast of California, and it is noon before the sun comes shivering out of gloom. But this August morning was an exception, as if determined to stamp itself upon the consciousness of Peter Findlay. The breeze, instead of blowing moistly from the west, was stealing in from the hot, eastward valleys; already the city had assumed a restless, peevish air under this sultry inland assault.

Peter Findlay looked up at the intolerant sun and cursed under his breath. "Everybody's bound to be up early a morning like this," he muttered. He glanced at his watch. It had just passed six o'clock.

Six o'clock in the morning on Peter Findlay's middle-class street was normally as dormant an hour as one could wish for. Except for the newsboy flinging skilfully twisted papers up long flights of wooden steps, or a rumbling bakery wagon bumping along the stonepaved thoroughfare, the block was always as deserted as a playhouse at midnight. But, thanks to this usually bright morning, Findlay told himself that everybody would be stirring. Already sparrows were rowdily chirping in long, restless lines along the telegraph wires, and the barking of yard-pent dogs expanded in the thick, heavy air.

un

"It's just my luck!" Findlay repeated, monotonously. "It's just my luck!" He had the trick of most people who either fancy that they are important enough for Fate's vindictive persecution, or who forget how many times they make port on the flood tide of chance. He reflected that in a crisis circumstances were always perverse. Not that he had experienced any decidedly critical moments in his career, but he had read stories, and gone to plays, and watched screen dramas unfold with relentless inevitability. In this fictional life with which he was saturated the courses of both the hero and the villain were obstructed by every conceivable mischance in the calendar. Things happened just as they were happening this morning. Had not his his broken headlights already occasioned remark and given rise to a betrayal of self-consciousness that amounted almost to indiscretion? And now, when a dull, drab morning would have offered every opportunity to slink unseen into the drowsy reaches of upper Pine Street, the day broke unclouded; not only unclouded, but uncomfortably warm-a sure temptation for habitual sluggards to deviate from their drowsy ways.

The depression that followed Peter Findlay's analysis of the situation was succeeded by a feeling of cunning elation. On second thought, he was glad of these tilts with Fortune. They gave him a sense of conflict, which drugged the sting of yesterday's defeat. He comforted himself that if he had failed to be heroic he might at least qualify for shrewdness. After all, his supreme test was to come; he was still to have a chance to prove his mettle.

Of course his wife would be up; this was inevitable; not because of the morning's sultriness so much as because an anxious night would have made her restless and uneasy. Peter Findlay was not given to sudden disappearances, and he tried to picture his wife's growing alarm as the hours wore on without his appearance. It occurred to him now that he could have telephoned. Well, there was nothing to be done but face the music, and all the confidence with which he had looked forward to putting up a convincing argument was

"Let me see," he mused, intent on giving his carefully prepared tale the test of an audible recital, "Mr. Jenkins, the cashier of the bank, was home sick at Hillsboro. He 'phoned me to come down for a conference at about four o'clock. I expected to be back in time for dinner, but couldn't make it. On the way home my machine skidded and hit a fence. Bang! went the lights. I pulled out of this mess only to have my machine die on me seven miles from no-place, and not a machine in sight. Finally a fellow came along and towed me into Colma. Stayed there all night at a dinky Italian hotel and got patched up at a garage early in the morning. And here I am."

"But, Peter, why didn't you telephone?"

"Oh yes, I forgot! I tried to raise you from Burlingame. The operator said the line was out of order. It isn't? Well, you know what disgusting liars these telephone girls are."

Peter Findlay rehearsed this last reply with an air of satisfied triumph. Then he glanced about. He was on Post Street, crossing Fillmore. In a few moments he would be home. A tonguetying dryness crept into his mouth. He felt a sudden nausea.

"I'm nervous, that's what is the matter," he muttered. 'Naturally, after what happened yesterday

99

Suddenly it came to him that he was passing the very point where the accident had occurred. Again he felt the impact of collision, again he heard the crash of shattered glass, again he woke up miles from town. And again he beheld himself trapped by the sneering figure of Fate standing in sinister dignity before him-trapped by the sneering figure of Fate with an empty pistol in its skinny hand.

Curiously enough, the unusual sunshine had not roused the sluggishness of upper Pine Street. Having gone to all the elaborate mental preparation for this contingency, Findlay felt a bit