isn't easy for a two-twenty-pounder like me, who likes his booze and his eats. But I ran to
where the referees were gathered at Landi's car.
One of them turned to me and said: "What's the matter, Wally? You sick?"
For a moment, I couldn't answer him. I just stood there, puffing and gasping, and I
guess my face must've been purple, like it always gets when I overexert myself or get
too excited.
"Have you 0.K.'d Landi?" I finally managed to ask.
"Yes. Why?" the referee came back at me.
"His papers?"
"O.K."
Have you seen his face ? Are you sure it's him driving the car?" I said.
"Sure. It's Landi, all right!"
I was getting desperate. My breath was all choking up on me. "Let me see his face!" I
insisted.
I turned toward Landi. He lifted his goggles and stared at me. His lips were set in a
hard, evil sort of smile, and his eyes had a terrible glare in them. It made my blood run
cold, as I met his glance. And his cheeks were a dead, fish-belly white that gave him the
look of a corpse--a living corpse, for his hands clutched the wheel, so that the sinews of
them stood out, and he seemed tense, eager, and alert for the race.
For maybe a second, we stared at each other. Then the ref touched me on the shoulder.
"You're satisfied it's Landi?" he asked. "Want to see his credentials?"
I shook my head. "No. I've seen enough. It's Landi, all right!"
My knees felt weak, as I turned and staggered away. How I got to the wicket of the
grandstand and back to my seat, I don't know.
A vast silence hung over the crowd for a moment. A pistol cracked, and I knew the race was on.
I watched --like a man watching a moving picture of his own funeral.
Landi's machine was out in the lead before the first twenty-five-mile lap was finished.
He swept around the sandbags that marked the turns with such slight slackening of pace that I
expected him to skid off the course. It seemed impossible that his car could keep up such
speed without mishap. But he covered lap after lap, getting every ounce of power he could
jam out of his motor.
At the end of the tenth lap, Landi was fully twenty miles ahead of his nearest rival.
