Just before they went up to William Knight’s house in New Hampshire, Reisden leased a car.
Automobiles like the one he wanted were not bought. One knew people and got on lists. One waited until the maker decided to build one’s auto, and waited while he did—it could take two years to build a good racing car. Reisden pulled strings. He was introduced to a man who had a car he couldn’t drive.
In Brookline, the auto was stabled by itself in a tree-shaded garage on a big estate. It was a heavy black brute with a long scratch down its side. The chauffeur shook his head. “This one’s a bastard. Drives big and mean, throws its weight away from you when you try to take a corner. Fights you all the way. We wanted to do the Glidden Tour this year, but not with this animal.”
“It has power?”
“It’ll do a hundred on a straight, and Dead Horse Hill didn’t even faze the sucker. I wouldn’t try Mount Washington with it, though. First time you try a bad curve at speed, bastard’ll tip like a drunk.” The chauffeur spat. “Go ahead, wreck the son of a bitch. We’re insured.”
“Gilbert’s goin’ to be terrified,” Daugherty remarked that night.
“For Richard,” Reisden said absently. He had the housing off the steering, looking to see what could be done with it.
“Harry wants to drive ’er, too.”
Reisden moved him aside and unscrewed the floorboard, playing a flashlight down into the connections between steering gear and axle. Once he’d seen one of these chain drives explode like shrapnel. He saw Harry driving this black brute, with his Perdita beside him. The image stung shockingly. “Harry will not,” he said sharply. “That’s a bad design. If the chain catches on the housing it’ll rip apart.”
“Goin’ to kill yourself?” Daugherty said dryly.
Reisden wiped his hands on a rag and lit a cigaret, wondering how much Daugherty actually knew about that. The two men’s eyes met and the silence lengthened. “No, goin’ to cut back the housing,” he said finally, mocking Daugherty’s accent, which was low of him; Daugherty didn’t notice, or pretended not to.
“Just don’t want Harry to drive it,” Daugherty suggested.
“It’s top-heavy as well.” Harry and Perdita would never drive together in an auto like this. Not if he could help it.
“If I’d got to live around that boy,” Daugherty said indirectly, “sometimes he’d get on my nerves.”
Reisden shook his head. “It’s Richard gets on my nerves.”
When Gilbert no longer believed in Richard, which must happen soon, Reisden would escape in the big black auto. Get away, drive all the way to New York. It would take days, and as long as he was moving between here and there, he could be neither who he was nor what he had got himself into.
Reisden stubbed his cigaret out.
Methodically he wrapped electrical tape around the wheel and listened to the muffled Boston traffic, trying to forget the sound of the engine and the smell of cold November air, and the memory of a wheel under his hands.