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“That’s nice,” spake the fearsome stranger. “Now stay jest the way you are and don’t make no peep or I’ll have to plug you wit’ this here gat.”

“Hey there!” he shouted. “Wait, please. Here I am–here’s your passenger!”

His straw hat blew off, but this was no time to stop for a straw hat. For a few rods he gained upon the vehicle, then as its motion increased he lost ground and ran a losing race. Its actions disclosed that a conscious if an uncertain hand guided its destinies. Wabbling this way and that it wheeled skiddingly round a corner. When Mr. Leary, rowelled on to yet greater speed by the spurs of a mounting misery, likewise turned the corner it was irrevocably remote, beyond all prospect of being overtaken by anything human pursuing it afoot. The swaying black bulk of it diminished and was swallowed up in the snow shower and the darkness. The rattle of mishandled gears died to a thin metallic clanking, then to a purring whisper, and then the whisper expired, dead silence ensuing.

V

In the void of this silence stood Mr. Leary, shivering now in the reaction that had succeeded the nerve jar of being robbed at a pistol’s point, and lacking the fervour of the chase to sustain him. For him the inconceivable disaster was complete and utter; upon him despair descended as a patent swatter upon a lone housefly. Miles away from home, penniless and friendless–the two terms being practically synonymous in New York–what asylum was there for him now? Suppose daylight found him abroad thus? Suppose he succumbed to exposure and was discovered stiffly frozen in a doorway? Death by processes of congealment must carry an added sting if one had to die in a suit of pink rompers buttoning down the back. As though the thought of freezing had been a cue to Nature he noted a tickling in his nose and a chokiness in his throat, and somewhere in his system, a long way off, so to speak, he felt a sneeze forming and approaching the surface.

To add to his state of misery, if anything could add to its distressing total, he was taking cold. When Mr. Leary took cold he took it thoroughly and throughout his system. Very soon, as he knew by past experience, his voice would be hoarse and wheezy and his nose and his eyes would run. But the sneeze was delayed in transit, and Mr. Leary took advantage of the respite to cast a glance about him. Perhaps–the expedient had surged suddenly into his brain–perhaps there might be a hotel or a lodging house of sorts hereabouts? If so, such an establishment would have a night clerk on duty, and despite the baggageless and cashless state of the suppliant it was possible the night clerk might be won, by compassion or by argument or by both, to furnish Mr. Leary shelter until after breakfast time, when over the telephone he could reach friends and from these friends procure an outfit of funds and suitable clothing.

In sight, though, there was no structure which by its outward appearance disclosed itself as a place of entertainment for the casual wayfarer. Howsomever, lights were shining through the frosted panes of a row of windows stretching across the top floor of a building immediately at hand, and even as he made this discovery Mr. Leary was aware of the dimmed sounds of revelry and of orchestral music up there, and also of an illuminated canvas triangle stuck above the hallway entrance of the particular building in question, this device bearing a lettered inscription upon it to advertise that here the members of the Lawrence P. McGillicuddy Literary Association and Pleasure Club were holding their Grand Annual Civic Ball; admission One Dollar, including Hat Check; Ladies Free when accompanied by Gents. Evidently the Lawrence P. McGillicuddys kept even later hours at their roisterings than the Bohemian sets in Washington Square kept.