intermittently among the crowd was drained and thrown out on the
boulevard, there to menace the tires of other travelers. The keen wind
whipped their hot faces and cleared a little their fuddled senses, now
that the bottle was empty. A glimmer of caution prompted Jack to drive
around through Beverly Hills and into Sunset Boulevard, when he might
have taken a shorter course home. It would be better, he thought, to
come into town from another direction, even if it took them longer to
reach home. He was careful to keep on a quiet residence street when he
passed through. Hollywood, and he turned at Vermont Avenue and drove
out into Griffith Park, swung into a crossroad and came out on a road
from Glendale. He made another turn or two, and finally slid into Los
Angeles on the main road from Pasadena, well within the speed limit
and with his heart beating a little nearer to normal.

"We've been to Mount Wilson, fellows. Don't forget that," he warned
his passengers. "Stick to it. If they got our number back there we can
bluff them into thinking they got it wrong. I'll let yuh out here and
you can walk home. Mum's the word--get that?"

He had taken only a passive part in the egregious folly of their play,
but they climbed out now without protest, subdued and willing to own
his leadership. Perhaps they realized suddenly that he was the
soberest man of the lot. Only once had he drunk on the way home, and
that sparingly, when the bottle had made the rounds. Like whipped
schoolboys the six slunk off to their homes, and as they disappeared,
Jack felt as though the full burden of the senseless crime had been
dropped crushingly upon his shoulders.

He drove the big car quietly up the palm-shaded street to where his
mother's wide-porched bungalow sprawled across two lots. He was sober