“Oh, really—”

“I mean it. Beautiful people never really look desperately sick. Nobody ever thinks of T.B. germs and sputum tests when he sees Camille.”

“I’m all right,” she said as she got into the automobile next to him.

He turned the key.

“I can see that,” he replied drily.

The car began to move.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Patience, my child. Be patient and all will be revealed to you.”

Driving with keen intensity, Lowry cut through as many side streets as he could, without going too much out of the way, and thus he managed to avoid a large part of the slow-moving city traffic.

Soon the road was a little less cluttered with cars and trucks and it was not very much longer before the oil wells around Long Beach came into view, thrusting up toward the blue sky in all their black, stark skeletonic ugliness. They reached the coast highway finally and to their right lay a smooth, unruffled sea.

Terry leaned back languidly in her seat and closed her eyes.

“Take some deep breaths,” Lowry said. “A little fresh air in the lungs is the best medicine there is.”

The car hummed along at fifty miles an hour. The warm sun and the fresh, salt smell began to relieve the tightness of Terry’s nerves. This was good country out here. It hadn’t been spoiled by the smog, the automobiles, the multitudes exploding out of Los Angeles.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Due south,” Lowry answered vaguely. “Not awfully far.”

“You’re plenty mysterious.”

“I know,” he said. “I’ve chased so many bubbles, I don’t want to give this a chance to become one. I want this to pan out the right way.”

As he spoke he pressed down on the accelerator eagerly. They heard the raucous beeping of a horn behind them. Lowry throttled down, muttering something about California drivers, and let a flashy maroon sports car race past them. It streaked ahead for about fifty feet, then eased into the side of the road and remained in front.

“Did you see who was in that car that just rocketed past us?” Lowry asked.

“No,” Terry said. “He went by a lot too fast for me to see anything.”

“Take a guess.”

“Winston Churchill?”

“Guess again.”

“Marlene Dietrich?”

Lowry shook his head. “You’re getting colder. I’ll give you just one more try.”

“Kaiser Wilhelm?” she asked.

“Wrong. It was your former boss.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Carrol, you mean?”

“Who else?”

She laughed bitterly. “Don’t tell me he’s a lover of the wide open spaces, too.”

Lowry shrugged. “I doubt it. Not after years of saloon life. He’s accustomed to breathing an atmosphere of stale beer and cheap perfume.”

“Do you think he saw us?” Terry asked anxiously, clenching her fists in unvoiced hatred of the man in the car ahead of her.