The Phantom Motor

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The Phantom Motor
by Jacques Futrelle
Two dazzling white eyes bulged through the night as an automobile
swept suddenly around a curve in the wide road and laid a smooth,
glaring pathway ahead. Even at the distance the rhythmical
crackling-chug informed Special Constable Baker that it was a gasoline
car, and the headlong swoop of the unblinking lights toward him made
him instantly aware of the fact that the speed ordinance of Yarborough
County was being a little more than broken - it was being obliterated.
Now the County of Yarborough was a wide expanse of summer estates
and superbly kept roads, level as a floor and offered distracting
temptations to the dangerous pastime of speeding. But against this was
the fact that the county was particular about its speed laws, so particular
in fact that had stationed half a hundred men upon its highways to abate
the nuisance. Incidentally it had found that keeping record of the
infractions of the law was an excellent source of income.
'Forty miles an hour if an inch,' remarked Baker to himself.
He arose from a camp-stool where he was wont to make himself
comfortable from six o'clock until midnight on watch, picked up his
lantern, turned up the light and stepped down to the edge of the road.
He always remained on watch at the same place - at one end of a long
stretch which autoists had unanimously dubbed The Trap. The Trap
was singularly tempting - perfectly macadamized road bed lying
between two tall stone walls with only enough of a sinuous twist in it to
make each end invisible from the other. Another man, Special
Constable Bowman, was stationed at the other end of The Trap and
there was telephonic communication between the points, enabling the

men to check each other and incidentally, if one failed to stop a car or
get its number, the other would. That at least was the theory.
So now, with the utmost confidence, Baker waited beside the road. The
approaching lights were only a couple of hundred yards away. At the
proper instant he would raise his lantern, the car would stop, its
occupants would protest and then the county would add a mite to its
general fund for making the roads even better and tempting autoists
still more. Or sometimes the cars didn't stop. In that event it was part of
the Special Constables' duties to get the number as it flew past, and
reference to the monthly automobile register would give the name of
the owner. An extra fine was always imposed in such cases.
Without the slightest diminution of speed the car came hurtling on
toward him and swung wide so as to take the straight path of The Trap
at full speed. At the psychological instant Baker stepped out into the
road and waved his lantern.
'Stop!' he commanded.
The crackling-chug came on, heedless of the cry. The auto was almost
upon him before he leaped out of the road - a feat at which he was
particularly expert- then it flashed by and plunged into The Trap. Baker
was, at the instant, so busily engaged in getting out of the way that he
couldn't read the number, but he was not disconcerted because he knew
there was no escape from The Trap. On the one side a solid stone wall
eight feet high marked the eastern boundary of the John Phelps Stocker
country estate, and on the other side a stone fence nine feet high
marked the western boundary of the Thomas Q. Rogers country estate.
There was no turnout, no place, no possible way for an auto to get out
of The Trap except at one of the two ends guarded by the special
constables. So Baker, perfectly confident of results, seized the phone.
'Car coming through sixty miles an hour,' he bawled. 'It won't stop. I
missed the number. Look out.'
'All right,' answered Special Constable Bowman.

For ten, fifteen, twenty minutes Baker waited expecting a call from
Bowman at the other end. It didn't come and finally he picked up the
phone again. No answer. He rang several times, battered the box and
did some tricks with the receiver. Still no answer. Finally he began to
feel worried. He remembered that at that same post one Special
Constable had been badly hurt by a reckless chauffeur who refused to
stop or turn his car when the officer stepped out into the road. In his
mind's eye he saw Bowman now lying helpless, perhaps badly injured.
If the car held the pace- at which it passed him it would be certain death
to whoever might be unlucky enough to get in its path.
With