Plank saw him from the veranda and instantly vaulted the rail to the lawn below.
"You damn fool!" yelled Mortimer, looking around, "what in hell do you think you'll do ?" And he clapped on full speed as Plank made a leap for the car and missed.
Mortimer laughed, and turned his head to look back, and the next instant something seemed to wrench the steering-wheel from its roots.

There was a blinding glare of light, a scream, and the great machine bounded into the air full length, turned completely over, and lay across a flower-bed, partly on one side.
Something was afire, too.

Men were rushing from the verandas, women screamed, and stood up wringing their hands; a mounted policeman came galloping through the darkness; people shouted: "Throw sand on it! Get shovels, for God's sake! Lift that tonneau! There's a woman under it." But they were mistaken, for Leila lay at the foot of the slope, one little bloody hand clutching the dead grass; and Plank knelt beside her, giving his orders quietly to those who came running down the hill from the roadway above, which was now fiercely illuminated by burning gasoline.

At last they got sand enough to quench the fire and men sufficient to lift the weight from the dead man's neck, and drag what was left of him onto the grass.
"Don't look," whispered Siward, drawing Sylvia back.
He and she both had put their shoulders to the tonneau along with the others; and now they stood there together in the shifting lantern-light, sickened, shivering under the summer stars, staring at the gathering crowd around that shapeless lump on the grass.
Plank passed them, walking beside an improvised stretcher, calm, almost smiling, as Sylvia sprang forward with a little sob of inquiry.
"There's the doctor, over there; that man is a doctor; he knows," repeated Plank with studied deliberation, looking down at Leila's deathly face.

"He says it's all right; he says he'll get a candle, and that he can tell by the flame's effect on the pupils of the eyes what exactly is the matter.