Around the World in 100 Days (10 page)

Harry wanted to scoff, to say that it was undoubtedly all a show, designed to win Charles over. But he couldn't bring himself to believe that Elizabeth was really that cold and conniving. Neither could he bring himself to forgive her entirely. “I'm sorry. It's just not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Do you still imagine this is going to be some sort of pleasure jaunt, Hardiman? It's going to be dirty and miserable and exhausting, and the last thing we need is a woman along. I mean, think about it. Where would she sleep? What would she eat? I bought supplies with two people in mind, not four. Where would she . . . you know? There won't be any facilities.”

“We can work all that out.”

“When? We arrive in New York today; we'll be on the road first thing tomorrow morning.” Harry shook his head vehemently. “No. No. It's just not possible.”

“Have you considered the fact,” said Charles, “that it's not your decision to make? The three of us are in this together. I move that we take a vote.”

“Why should you have any say at all? This was never your idea; you came only because your father told you to.”

“Well, what about Shaugnessey, then? Have you asked him?”

Harry sighed. He hadn't bothered to mention the matter to Johnny. Though his friend was a genius where machinery was concerned, he didn't know the first thing about people, particularly women. He was obviously smitten with Elizabeth and would welcome her company without considering the problems involved.

Clearly, Elizabeth was a clever and capable woman. But this trip would demand more than cleverness. It would require unflagging determination and fortitude, and there was no way of knowing whether she had those qualities.

Of course, when it came to toughness and tenacity, she probably had the edge on Charles Hardiman. And, now that Harry thought about it, a reporter for a major London newspaper might prove to be a real advantage. As Elizabeth had demonstrated, a press pass sometimes opened doors that were firmly closed to ordinary people.

“If she did come,” said Harry, “—and I'm not saying she
will
come, but supposing she did—she would have to provide her own food and pay for her own lodging . . . if there is any.”

“She fully expects that. And should she run short of funds, I can easily afford to lend her some.”

“No doubt. Unless, of course, we're attacked by Chinese bandits who beat us senseless and take all our money.”

Charles looked startled. “Do you think that's likely?”

Harry sighed again. “This is not the Cotswolds we'll be traveling through, Hardiman, or the Lake Country. Anything is likely. Anything at all.”

 

If Harry had been truly adamant—had he, for example, refused to drive the car if Elizabeth was in it—he might have had his way. But, though he did not approve of her impulsive and foolhardy plan, he could not bring himself to spoil it, now that he knew how much it meant to her. Besides, he was hardly in a position to condemn anyone for being impulsive or foolhardy.

And so it was agreed that Elizabeth would join them on a sort of trial basis. If she proved too much of a liability, Harry reserved the right to drop her off at the nearest train station; from there she could make her own way home.

Thanks to the transatlantic telegraph cable, news now crossed across the ocean far faster than any ship. For a week, New Yorkers had been reading about the
Flash
's imminent arrival, and hundreds had gathered to welcome the car and its crew; a squad of policemen had been brought in to keep them from mobbing the intrepid young motorists.

While Harry and Johnny oversaw the unloading of the motorcar, Charles accompanied Elizabeth to the nearest Western Union office, where she sent a triumphant telegram to the
Daily Graphic
, informing the paper that she had won—or, more accurately, finagled—a seat in the car; the editor promptly cabled her ten pounds for expenses.

She at once began composing her first dispatch:

TWELVE
In which

F
rom talking to the longshoremen, Harry learned that, instead of driving through Manhattan—and through the daunting mass of well-wishers—he could put the motorcar on a ferry, cross the Hudson River to New Jersey, and head west from there. It would mean missing the chance to see one of the world's great cities, unfortunately. But this was not a sightseeing tour; it was a race against time.

They filled the
Flash
's ten-gallon fuel tank with the last of the kerosene and lit the burner; in fifteen minutes, they had enough steam to drive the car aboard the ferry. A chorus of disappointed cries arose from the vast welcoming committee, who wanted a closer look at the car and its crew.

Since everyone had assumed the travelers would be going by way of Manhattan, there was no fanfare when they disembarked in Hoboken, and no crowd of admirers to slow them down. They took a second ferry to Newark and by five o'clock were in the open countryside, cruising along an old toll road at a gratifying speed.

A regular network of these former turnpikes was strung out across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They had once been the main arteries between cities, but the coming of the railroad had changed all that. The turnpikes were still used by farm wagons and by cyclists, though, so most were in reasonably good repair, and many were marked on maps.

Harry didn't have much use for maps. He had been blessed with a good sense of direction, so he preferred to trust it and, if he got in trouble, ask for directions from the locals—who, it stood to reason, should know the neighborhood better than some printer in a city hundreds of miles away.

Charles, on the other hand, hated leaving anything to chance. He had purchased a map of the area and spent much of his time either peering nearsightedly at it—he had eyeglasses but was too vain to wear them, particularly in front of Elizabeth—or attempting to keep it from blowing out of the car.

Harry would not have minded so much, had Charles not insisted on calling out at regular intervals something on the order of “Now, when we reach New Brunswick, you'll want to take the road to the right; otherwise we'll end up in Atlantic City.” When he sensed one of these comments coming, Harry tried to find a bump or a pothole that would rattle the boy's teeth.

Elizabeth was not fazed by this in the least. She merely hung on to her hat and cried “Whoo!” as though she were on a roller coaster. Aside from these deliberate jolts, the ride was so smooth that she asked, “What sort of suspension did you put on her, Mr. Shaugnessey?”

Johnny had pulled a kerchief over his head and was tying it under his chin to keep his cap in place. “Coil springs, ma'am,” he mumbled. “One on each wheel.”

“Coil springs? Is that your own invention?”

“You might say he reinvented them,” Harry put in. “Coil springs have a tendency to break; these are made of a special alloy.”

“Well, they work superbly,” said Elizabeth.

Charles raised his eyes from the map. “According to this—” he started to say, but the breath went out of him as the car lurched over a half-buried rock.

Harry was not much on planning, either. He hadn't thought to inquire whether Americans might have some laws about motorcars. But he had learned his lesson back in Marylebone about sharing the road. When he overtook a bicycle or a hay wagon, he slowed down and made a wide detour, calling out, “Motorcar coming! Motorcar coming!”

Despite his precautions, horses sometimes panicked at the sight of a large, self-propelled vehicle belching smoke. And more than one cyclist, either startled or fascinated by the
Flash
, went careening into a ditch.

Gradually the traffic thinned out, until at last the turnpike stretched ahead of them, unoccupied and unobstructed, all the way to the horizon. Harry, who was admittedly not burdened by cares even at the worst of times, felt such a fierce sense of freedom that he let out a whoop of delight.

“What the deuce is wrong with you?” demanded Charles.

“Wrong?
Nothing
is wrong. That's the point! For the next one hundred days, we'll have no responsibilities, no rules, no demands, no parental disapproval, only the open road before us. Isn't it splendid?”

“
Ninety
days,” Charles reminded him. He glanced up at the darkening sky. “And it won't be so splendid when those clouds decide to let loose.”

To Harry's disgust, Charles's gloomy outlook proved accurate. All afternoon, the sky grew more and more threatening; as they crossed the bridge over the Delaware River, they were caught in a drenching downpour. Harry halted and helped Johnny put up the rain hood, which had lain folded up accordion-style behind the rear seat. The leather cover was attached to a framework of steel rods; when the hood was raised, the rods locked into place to support it. As the wind picked up and began blowing rain into the cab, they pulled down the leather side curtains, which had small windows made of isinglass—thin sheets of mica.

When they reached Philadelphia, Charles took a hotel room, but Elizabeth remained with the others. “I don't want any special treatment,” she insisted. “Besides, I can't afford a hotel.”

When they tried to rent space in a livery stable, the owner regarded both the motorcar and Harry's English banknotes with disdain. “I don't take no foreign money. And even if I did, I wouldn't share my roof with the very thing that's going to put me out of business one day, would I?”

Elizabeth lifted the side curtain and showed the man her press pass. “You will be out of business far sooner,” she said sweetly, “if I tell my readers how you refused shelter to the son of the famous Phileas Fogg.”

 

When they were seated on bales of straw, drinking coffee and eating ham sandwiches provided by the stableman's wife, Harry said, “That was quick thinking. Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

“You gave yourself away, however.”

“In what way?”

“When we met, you told me that you knew nothing about my father.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “I didn't want you thinking I was interested in you only because you were Phileas Fogg's son.”

“Yes, well, in future could you please leave my father's name out of it? I don't like always feeling that I'm riding on his coattails.”

“All right,” said Elizabeth. “Next time I'll tell them you're the son of the famous Thomas Edison.”

Harry couldn't help laughing. “We've got one of those already.” He nodded at Johnny, who had taken up his oilcan and was lubricating everything on the car that could be lubricated.

“True. But he's Mr. Edison's
older
son, Thomas Junior. You can be the younger and less mechanically gifted son . . . Monkey Edison.”

 

Among Harry's enviable qualities was the ability to fall asleep anywhere. He gathered straw into a soft though prickly mattress, spread a blanket over it, and was out like one of Mr. Edison's electric lights. Ordinarily he would have slept soundly until morning, but halfway through the night he woke with the distinct sense that something was wrong.

He lay listening to the muted sounds around him—the horses sighing, the raindrops skipping along the roof, Johnny snoring—until he heard one that seemed out of place. It sounded like metal scraping metal and it seemed to come from the far end of the stable, where the
Flash
sat alongside half a dozen ordinary carriages.

Harry crept down the aisle toward the car. As he passed the adjacent horse stall, its occupant gave an uneasy snort. Harry froze in place, but it did no good. The skittish animal snorted again and danced nervously about, bumping the sides of the stall.