He knew it was a mad thing he was doing, rushing across space through
the dark at the beck of a woman's smile, a woman who was another man's
wife, but a woman who had set on fire a whole circle of men of which he
was a part. He was riding against all caution to win a bet, riding
against time to get there before two other men who were riding as hard
from other directions to win the woman who belonged to an absent
husband, win her and run away with her if he could. It was the
culmination of a year of extravagances, the last cry in sensations, and
the telephone wires had been hot with daring, wild allurement, and mad
threat in several directions since late the night before.

The woman was in a great summer hotel where extravagances of all sorts
are in vogue, and it had been her latest game to call with her lute-like
voice over the phone to three of her men friends who had wooed her
the strongest, daring them all to come to her at once, promising to fly
with the one who reached her first, but if none reached her before
morning dawned she remained as she was and laughed at them all.

Laurence Shafton had closed with the challenge at once and given orders
for his car to be ready to start in ten minutes. From a southern city
about an equal distance from the lady, one Percy Emerson, of the
Wellington-Emersons, started about the same time, leaving a trail of
telegrams and phone messages to be sent after his departure. The third
man, Mortimer McMarter, a hot-headed, hot-blooded scot, had started with
the rest, for the lady knew her lovers well, and not one would refuse;
but he was lying dead at a wayside inn with his car a heap of litter
outside from having collided with a truck that was minding its own
business and giving plenty of room to any sane man. This one was not
sane. But of this happening not even the lady knew as yet, for Mortimer
McMarter was not one to leave tales behind him when he went out of