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.