Burned Bridges

For the few minutes it took the red roadster to slip under the green

summits of Twin Peaks and by a maze of boulevards debouch at length upon

Valencia and so into the busy length of Market Street their talk ran to

commonplaces. Thompson placed himself unreservedly in Sophie's hands. He

had to reach an express office on lower Market, get his things, and

proceed thence to the house where he had roomed all winter. Since it

suited Miss Carr's book to convey him to the first point, he accepted

the gift of her company gladly. So in the fullness of time they came

into the downtown press of traffic, among which, he observed, Sophie

steered her machine like a veteran.

At Third and Market the traffic whistle blocked them with the front

wheels over the safety line that guided the flow of cross-street

pedestrians, and the point man, crabbed perhaps from a long trick amidst

that roaring maze of vehicles, motioned autocratically for her to back

up.

Sophie muttered impatiently under her breath and went into reverse.

Behind her the traffic was piling up, each machine stealing every inch

of vantage for the go-ahead signal, crowding up wheel to wheel, the nose

of one thrusting at the rear fender of the other. On one side of Sophie

rose the base of a safety station for street-car boarders. Between her

car and the curb a long-snouted gray touring-car was edging in. And as

she backed under the imperative command of the traffic officer, one rear

hub clinked against the hind fender of the other, jarring both cars a

little, dinting the gray one's fender, marring the glossy finish.

A chauffeur in a peaked cap drove the gray machine. He looked across at

Sophie, scowling. He was young and red-faced, a pugnacious-looking

individual.

"Back to the country, Jane, an' practice on the farm wagon," he snarled

out of one corner of his mouth. "Yuh drive like a hick, yuh do."

"Talk civil to a woman," Thompson snapped back at him, "or keep your

mouth shut."

The chauffeur bestowed upon him a rancorous glare. His sharp, ferret

eyes gleamed. Then he deliberately spat upon the impeccably shining red

hood of Sophie's roadster.

A scant arm's length separated him from Thompson. Thompson bridged that

gap with his feet still on the running-board of the roadster. He moved

so quickly that the chauffeur had no chance. He did try to slide out

from behind the wheel and his fist doubled and drew back, but Thompson's

work-hardened fingers closed about his neck, and the powerful arms back

of those clutching hands twisted the man out of all position to strike

any sort of blow. He yanked the chauffeur's head out over the side of

the car, struck him one open-handed slap that was like an earnest cluff

from a sizable bear, lifted again and banged the man's face down on the

controls on his wheels, then pushed him back into his seat, limp and

disheveled, all the insolent defiance knocked out of him.