"Surely,"
he told the night, "the driver knows best--he and Bannerman."
The cab started off jogging so sedately up Madison Avenue that
Maitland glanced at his watch and elevated his brows dubiously;
then with his stick poked open the trap in the roof.
"If you really think it best for me to go home, cabby, you'll have
to drive like hell," he suggested mildly.
"Yessir!"
A whip-lash cracked loudly over the horse's back, and the hansom,
lurching into Thirty-fourth Street on one wheel, was presently
jouncing eastward over rough cobbles, at a regardless pace which
roused the gongs of the surface cars to a clangor of hysterical
expostulation. In a trice the "L" extension was roaring overhead;
and a little later the ferry gates were yawning before them. Again
Maitland consulted his watch, commenting briefly: "In time."
Yet he reckoned without the ferry, one of whose employees
deliberately and implacably swung to the gates in the very face of
the astonished cab-horse, which promptly rose upon its hind legs
and pawed the air with gestures of pardonable exasperation. To no
avail, however; the gates remained closed, the cabby (with
language) reined his steed back a yard or two, and Maitland,
lighting a cigarette, composed himself to simulate patience.
Followed a wait of ten minutes or so, in which a number of
vehicles joined company with the cab; the passenger was vaguely
aware of the jarring purr of a motor-car, like that of some huge
cat, in the immediate rear.
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