"Allen, Grant - Miss Cayley's Adventures 03 - The Adenture of the Inquisitive American" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Grant)

my hat: I saunter where I choose, so far as circumstances
permit; and I wait to see what chance will bring me. My
ideal is breeziness.

The hired bicycle was not a bad machine, as hired bicycles
go; it jolted one as little as you can expect from a common
hack; it never stopped at a Bier-Garten; and it showed very
few signs of having been ridden by beginners with an
unconquerable desire to tilt at the hedgerow. So off I
soared at once, heedless of the jeers of Teutonic youth who
found the sight of a lady riding a cycle in skirts a strange
one--for in South Germany the 'rational' costume is so
universal among women cyclists that 'tis the skirt that
provokes unfavourable comment from those jealous guardians
of female propriety, the street boys. I hurried on at a
brisk pace past the Palm-Garden and the suburbs, with my
loose hair straying on the breeze behind, till I found
myself pedalling at a good round pace on a broad, level
road, which led towards a village, by name Fraunheim.

As I scurried across the plain, with the wind in my face,
not unpleasantly, I had some dim consciousness of somebody
unknown flying after me headlong. My first idea was that
Harold Tillington had hunted me down and tracked me to my
lair; but gazing back, I saw my pursuer was a tall and
ungainly man, with a straw-coloured moustache, apparently
American, and that he was following me on his machine,
closely watching my action. He had such a cunning
expression on his face, and seemed so strangely inquisitive,
with eyes riveted on my treadles, that I didn't quite like
the look of him. I put on the pace, to see if I could
outstrip him, for I am a swift cyclist. But his long legs
were too much for me. He did not gain on me, it is true;
but neither did I outpace him. Pedalling my very hardest--
and I can make good time when necessary--I still kept pretty
much at the same distance in front of him all the way to
Fraunheim.

Gradually I began to feel sure that the weedy-looking man
with the alert face was really pursuing me. When I went
faster, he went faster too; when I gave him a chance to pass
me, he kept close at my heels, and appeared to be keenly
watching the style of my ankle-action. I gathered that he
was a connoisseur; but why on earth he should persecute me I
could not imagine. My spirit was roused now--I pedalled
with a will; if I rode all day I would not let him go past
me.

Beyond the cobble-paved chief street of Fraunheim the road
took a sharp bend, and began to mount the slopes of the