Page:Restless Earth.djvu/209

they had shown their permits for the last time in the patrolled area.

“Which is the best way to kill a cat, Roy?”

The question was so totally unexpected and irrelevant to the driver’s thoughts that he took his gaze from the road for an instant, and the racing vehicle promptly lunged into the grass at the edge of the macadam strip. Roy jerked the car back upon the road without slackening speed.

He had concluded that Harley had relapsed into his former lethargic state.

Roy had commenced the return journey in high spirits. He had been genially loquacious until they had reached Dannevirke. Then Harley’s continued silence had taken effect, and the speed of the car had increased as Roy’s loquacity diminished. Finally he had become silent, too.

There had been no mention of food at Palmerston North, and at Wanganui the silence had been equally discouraging. Roy had shot an imploring glance at his passenger as they passed a brilliantly-illumined restaurant in the Avenue into which theatre-patrons were filing in search of suppers they did not need. He had slowed the car to a walking pace, but Harley had merely shot him an impatient glance of enquiry, and he had tightened his belt and stepped on the accelerator. He had crossed the railway at the foot of St. John's Hill at a speed some twenty miles in excess of the limit, indulging a momentary resentment of Harley’s lack of consideration.

Now the man talked about cats!

“What did you say?” asked Roy incredulously, when he had safely negotiated the bridge and the car was speeding along the few chains of main street in the little town.

“Which is the best way to kill a cat?”

“Why, drown the thing.”

“But, supposing you couldn’t catch it? Supposing it is half-wild?”

“Shoot it. That’s the only way to fix ’em.”