le risk of undesirable
publicity. At any rate he would be shielded for the moment from the life
which might at any moment awaken in the still sleeping and apparently
vacant neighbourhood. Finally, of course, there was the hope that the
drunken cabman might be roused, and once roused might be capable, under
promise of rich financial reward, of conveying Mr. Leary to his bachelor
apartments in West Eighty-fifth Street before dawn came, with its
early-bird milkmen and its before-day newspaper distributors and its
others too numerous to mention.

Without warning of any sort the cab started off, seemingly of its own
volition. Mr. Leary's gait became a desperate gallop, and as he galloped
he gave voice in entreaty.

[Illustration: MR. LEARY'S GAIT BECAME A DESPERATE GALLOP, AND AS HE
GALLOPED HE SHOUTED: "WAIT, PLEASE. HERE I AM--HERE'S YOUR PASSENGER!"]

"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