He'd also designed a folding hangar and evolved a "Hangar for Every Home" slogan. When his father died and he had to go to work he didn't have so much time to put in on the blimp, but I guess he worked on it Sundays and holidays.

It's funny what money does. All our lives a lot of us had been as thick as thieves; and then, all of a sudden, there was a chasm miles wide between me and the others; that was after we left college and I joined the force. They were all rich, and I was a cop. Nothing was ever said, of course, and they were always nice to me when I saw any of them. Perhaps I felt the difference more than they did, but it was there all right. I saw less and less of them at first; and then, after a while, I didn't see them at all.

At the end of two years I took my bar examination and failed. That was a bump. I guess I must have had ambitions; I had seen myself crawling up out of mediocrity and making a place for myself with the best of them. Of course I knew that I could take the examinations again, but something inside me had gone haywire. You can't plug and plug and hope and hope for years the way I had been doing and then get a jolt like that without something happening to whatever it is that drives a fellow on; I guess my drive shaft buckled.

I was sore on the world; so I took it out on traffic violators. This particular time happened to be a Saturday afternoon, bright and sunny, and there were a lot of them for me to take it out on. I'd been handing out tickets on the state highway just outside town until I almost had writer's cramp. I was sitting on my machine in a little hideout on a side road waiting for the next victim, when a great big, flashy roadster with the top down streaked by at about seventy.

By the time I'd wheeled onto the pavement and gotten under way it was out of sight around a curve a mile down the road; then I settled myself in the saddle and lit out after it. I thought to myself, "This is going to cost you something, young fellow, whoever you are. "

The country club of the oil barons was about ten mites down the road, and I figured that that was just about where that bus was heading for; about the only people in town who drove cars like that were members of that country club. And I was right. The car was slowing down to make the turn into the entrance to the club grounds when I pulled up alongside and motioned it over to the side of the road.

As I left my machine and walked toward the side of the roadster I was reaching into my inside pocket for my book without looking up at the driver. When I did, I saw it was a girl.

"Why, Johnny Lafitte!" she cried. It was Daisy Juke.

I shoved my book back into my pocket; I wouldn't have given Daisy Juke a ticket if she'd run over my grandmother. "I hope I haven't made you miss the train, Daisy," I said.

She laughed and lighted a cigarette. "I'm awful sorry, Johnny; it's new, and I wanted to see what it would do. "

"Did you find out?"

"I got up to ninety once, but that's confidential; don't tell anyone." She was smiling all the time in that way she had, and all the old heeling I'd had for her ever since I was a kid broke out all over me like measles.

I came up and leaned on the side of the car and smiled back at her. "I don't intend to tell anyone, but don't do it again, please. You'll kill yourself or someone else."

"Where in the world do you keep yourself, Johnny? Why don't you come and see a fellow? I've often wondered why. "

"You've thought about me?" I asked.

"Lots, Johnny," and there was something in the way she said it-well, I can't explain what I mean.

Her face was flushed, her blonde hair blown every which way; she was the most beautiful picture that day that I had ever seen before or have ever seen since; but though I was leaning close to her, my heart full of love, she was a thousand miles away from me-the chassis of the car she drove cost sixteen thousand dollars without any body, and I was only a dumb copper who had just flunked the bar exams; perhaps you know what I mean.

"Do you ever see Frank or Shirley or Billy?" I asked.

"Often." She paused. "Haven't you heard?"

"Heard what?"

"I'll whisper it to you." She leaned close to me; I caught a faint odor of liquor on her breath. "Frank and I are going to be married next month."

I don't know which hurt me the worst, what she told me or the liquor. I don't remember now what I said after that; probably I congratulated her and wished them happiness. I know she asked me to come and see her, and I promised that I would; then she started up and turned up the driveway of the country club-where I could only go as a cop.