The smell filled the whole place.
"Holy Mother!" exclaimed Gottfried.
We all sniffed.
"Fantastic, Otto!
Outside the poets, there are not words to describe it."
"It's too good for this murky hole," said Lenz. "I've an idea. . . .
Let's go and have supper in the country somewhere and take the bottles with us.
We can finish them off in God's great out-of-doors."
"Excellent!"
We shoved aside the Cadillac on which we had been working all afternoon, and disclosed behind it a queer-look ing object on four wheels: Otto Koster's racing car—the pride of the workshop.
Koster had bought the car, a top-heavy old bus, at an auction for next to nothing.
Connoisseurs who saw it at the time pronounced it without hesitation an interesting specimen for a transport museum.
Bollwies, wholesale manufacturer of ladies' ready-made dresses and incidentally a speedway enthusiast, advised Otto to convert it into a sewing machine.
But Koster was not to be discouraged.
He took down the car as if it had been a watch, and worked on it night after night for months.
Then one evening he turned up in it outside the bar which we usually frequented.
Bollwies nearly fell over with laughing when he saw it, it still looked so funny.
For a bit of fun he challenged Otto to a race.
He offered two hundred marks to twenty if Koster would take him on in his new sports car—course ten kilometres, Otto to have a kilometre start.
Otto took up the bet.
But Otto went one better.
He refused the handicap and raised the odds to even money, a thousand marks each way.
Bollwies, delighted, offered to drive him to a mental home immediately. Everyone laughed and prepared to enjoy the joke.
Koster's only response was to switch on his engine.
They set off to settle the matter at once.
Bollwies came back looking as if he had seen the great sea serpent, and wrote out the cheque and another as well.
He wanted to buy the machine on the spot.
But Koster just laughed at him.
He wouldn't have parted with it for any money on earth.
Outside it looked a terrible wreck, but inside it was like a new pin.
For daily use we had rigged it with a particularly old-fashioned body that had just happened to fit; the paint was gone, the mudguards were split, and the hood was quite ten years old!
We could have done it better, of course. But we had a reason for not doing so.
"Karl," we christened him—Karl, the Road Spook.
Karl was sniffing along the highway.
"Otto," said I, "here comes a victim."
A big Buick hooted impatiently behind us.
He was overtaking us rapidly.
Soon the two radiators were level.
The man at the wheel glanced at us idly!
His eye surveyed the shabby Karl contemptuously.
Then he looked away—and had forgotten us already.
A few seconds later he was obliged to notice that Karl was still running him neck-and-neck.
He sat up a little, gave us an amused glance, and stepped on the accelerator.
Still Karl did not yield.
Little and fleet as a terrier running beside a bloodhound, he still held his place alongside the gleaming locomotive of nickel and varnish.
The man gripped the wheel more firmly.
He was still completely unsuspecting, and gave us a scornful look.
He had decided, evidently, to show us what his sleigh could do.
He stepped so hard on the accelerator that the exhaust roared again. But it was no good. He could not get by.
Unsightly and ill-favoured, Karl stuck to him still.