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Adventures of a Suburbanite

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<h2> XIII. MILLINGTON'S MOTOR MYSTERY </h2> MILLINGTON and I hunted up the automobile the next day, and it was in worse condition than I had imagined. The only way the car could be got back to his garage was on a truck, but we got it there, and unloaded it, and Millington hunted up all his tools and got them ready to use the next day. It was late by that time, and we locked the garage and went to bed. All night I worried over having taken two dollars and forty-five cents from Millington for that collection of old metal that had been a motor-car, and as early as possible the next morning I took the money and went over to Millington's. I found him just going out to the garage, and he positively refused to take back the money. He said the car was in just the condition he wanted it, and that if I hadn't knocked the witchery out of it no one could. He said he hoped—and just then he opened the garage door. There stood the automobile, on the very spot where we had left it, but there was not a scratch on it. Except that it was an ancient model, it might have been a brand new car. Even the brasswork had been polished, and at the first glance the tires seemed new, but we found they had only been carefully repaired and painted drab. Millington stood looking at the automobile a few minutes and then laughed. He turned to me with a strangely contorted face and said: “Uncle Tom, you are invited to take a ride with Cleopatra in my air-ship to-night at midnight.” Millington said this in a very calm voice, but he immediately followed it by asking me to have a piece of strawberry pie, and instead of pie he offered me the can of gear grease. I managed to coax him into the house, and when the doctor arrived he advised absolute rest. He said Millington's brain was not yet permanently affected, but that another such shock would be too much for him. He said that for the present we must humour him, and try to make him believe that the automobile was damaged beyond recovery. It seemed to have a soothing effect, and to aid his recovery I got into the car, ran it into the street, aimed it at a stone wall opposite Millington's window, threw on the high speed, and jumped to one side. One minute later the machine was afire, and half an hour later little was left of it but the metal parts, and they were badly warped. Mr. Prawley came out when he saw the fire, and a look of the most fiendish joy glittered in his eyes. Never have I seen a man show such pleasure over the destruction of an automobile. His hatred of automobiles seemed to be endless and bottomless. When I told Millington that his automobile was now in about as bad condition as man could put it into, he sat up in bed, and the light of sanity came into his eyes. He walked to the window and looked out at the car, and became his old cheerful self again. He said that there was no doubt now that the devils in the car had been exorcised, and that with a few weeks work he could get it back into such shape that the engine would be working properly, and we would then, he said take that little run up to Port Lafayette. He then took a little nourishment, and by night he was quite himself again. When he had had his dinner I went home and had mine, and went to bed at once, for I knew Millington would be at work soon after sun-up. I had hardly got into bed, however, when I began to fear that Millington's eagerness would get the best of him, and at ten o'clock I went over to his house. I found him in bed and awake and cheerful, but he said he did not mean to get up. He said it was against his policy to get up the day before in order to be up the next day, so I sat by his bed and read chapters from a dear little work of fiction entitled “Easy Remedies for Ignition Troubles,” until the clock struck twelve, and then Millington hopped out of bed and threw on his clothes. The moment we stepped from the back door the same thing struck us both with surprise. There was a light in the garage! My first thought was that some rascal was in the garage trying to ruin Millington's automobile, but a second thought assured me this was impossible. Ruin could be carried no farther than I had carried it. Bidding Millington be silent, I crept cautiously toward the garage, with Millington at my heels, and without a sound we peered in at the window. The sight was one that would have shaken the strongest man. Bending over the motor, with his face made unearthly by the artificial light that fell upon it obliquely, casting deep shadows, was that villain, Mr. Prawley! I have never seen anything so devilish as that wretch as he worked with inhuman agility and haste. His long, claw-like fingers danced from one part of the machine to another fiendishly, and a hideous grin distorted his features. He was humming some weird tune, and I noted that he was ambidextrous, for he was varnishing the hood with one hand while with the other he was putting in a new spark plug. A tremor of horror passed over Millington and over me at the same moment. A few whispered words, a few stealthy steps, and we burst in and seized Mr. Prawley by the arms. In a moment we had him on the floor of the garage, bound hand and foot. Millington was for wreaking immediate vengeance on him, but I stood firmly for a more lawful course, and the next day we handed him over to the authorities, and his whole miserable story came out. His name was not Mr. Prawley at all. Neither was it Alonzo Duggs, which was the name he he had given us when Isobel and I hired him. His name was William Alexander Vandergribbin. He came of good family, but mania for speeding automobiles had brought him to ruin, and the third time he was arrested for over-speeding a sentence of thirty years in the penitentiary had been pronounced by the judge. The judge, however, had suspended the sentence provided that William Alexander Vandergribbin never again touched an automobile. For several years Vandergribbin fought down his appetite. Then he fell. He changed his name to Flossy Zozo, and secured a job as the death-defying loop-the-gappist with the big show. For a time the speeding down the runway in the fake automobile, with the somersault at the bottom of the run, appeased his cravings, but the rules of the show prohibited him from tinkering with the fake automobile, which was strictly in charge of the property man, and Vandergribbin left the show, changed his name to Alonzo Duggs, and seeking our quiet town, chose work in the house nearest the man owning the oldest automobile. For weeks he had watched his opportunity—you know the rest. He is now in Sing Sing. I am sorry to end this story so abruptly, but Millington has just come over to ask if I would not like to take a little run out to Port Lafayette. I have always wanted to go to Port Lafayette, which is about eleven miles from here; so, if you will excuse me, I will go and button Isobel's matinee gown, and we will be off. <h3> END </h3> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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