had locked that hellish beast in with the grisly bundle.
The first gas station—yelling to cover the sound of mewling from the trunk.
Trying to break open the trunk and being caught at it by the sheriff—and fleeing so hastily that he'd forgotten his tools.
The crazily abrupt leave-taking from the second filling-station, after shouting to drown the whimpering of the trapped cat. Suspicious, insane actions. . . .
The sheriff must have phoned ahead on the road to have him stopped. Or else the last filling-station attendant had done it. . . .
To have him stopped . . . to have the trunk forced open. . . .
Opper shouted aloud and reeled in his seat as he shoved the accelerator down. The car leaped as his foot went to the floorboard. The speedometer needle climbed up from the forty-mile mark.
Caught—with that thing in the trunk behind him! Caught!
"But I won't be," he yelled, staring at the suddenly startled face of the driver of a car flashing past him from the opposite direction. "I won't be!"
The speedometer needle shook at seventy miles an hour, pressed on past to seventy-six. The car screamed around a long bend in the road, swayed sickeningly as it righted itself.
But behind, the motorcycle engine, under full throttle now, beat ever louder in his ears.
"I won't be caught!"
Ahead was another bend, not so gradual as the one he had just passed. He shot toward it, forcing the big old sedan at its fullest speed, glaring straight ahead, hands clamped to the bucking wheel.
The motorcycle drew alongside. The uniformed figure on it, regardless of speed and the curve ahead, recklessly drew over within a foot of the running-board.
"Stop that car!"
Opper's reply was to try senselessly to push the accelerator harder against the floor. The trooper drew still closer, leveled his gun at Opper's body.
"Stop!"
A last remnant of sanity drifted through Opper's brain.
After all, nobody knew what was in the trunk. The trooper couldn't open it without a key, unless he broke it open. And he'd have to have a warrant to do that. Meanwhile, the cat was dead, smothered long ago, so that its ghostly mewling could not be heard. Even now he might brazen the thing out, pay a fine and go on to the swamp.
With his front wheels almost on the curve, Opper took his foot off the accelerator. There was a shrieking of tires as the motor braked the wheels and the car took the turn. The trooper hung grimly to the sedan's flank.
In a vast silence, shaking and sick, Opper stopped the car. The trooper, gun still in hand, stood beside him after racking his motorcycle.
"Get out," he said, waving the gun.
Opper got slowly from the car and stood before the man. He felt deft fingers search him for a weapon, and thanked God he had put the silenced gun in the trunk.
"You heard me yell to stop, and you saw me beside you. Why didn't you stop?"
In the silence succeeding the rush of air and howl of racing motors, Opper heard his voice, muffled, as though it came to his ears through a thin partition.
