The Owl Taxi. Footner Hulbert

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СКАЧАТЬ is he?" asked Greg with natural curiosity.

      She gave him a look of appeal. "Don't ask me. I can't tell you the truth."

      Her speech had an alluring quality of strangeness. It was not that she spoke with an accent exactly; it was more like the speech of an American who might have lived long among foreigners. Greg could not read her race from her features; she had great brown eyes with a fleck of red in them when they caught the light; her skin was creamy. He could not tell the color of her hair because of the cap that she had pulled completely over her head in the style that youths affect, but he guessed it was dark red to match her eyebrows. She had a soft and babyish mouth that did not seem to go with the fiery eyes. Greg guessed that the eyes expressed her character, while the mouth had just been thrown in to make her adorable. Her voice was too deep for her size, but that was no doubt assumed. Sometimes when she forgot it scaled up. She was displaying a boyish nonchalance that was altogether delightful and funny. To tease her Greg offered her a cigarette. She declined it.

      "I smoke a pipe," was her astonishing reason.

      She did not, however, offer to produce it.

      As she had forecast, the tall foreigner did indeed presently issue from the Tours, and hailed one of the cabs waiting below the entrance. Greg cranked his engine. The other cab turned around at the corner and passed down beside them. Greg took care to be hidden behind his cab as the other passed. Climbing in he followed it as a matter of course.

      "What time do you suppose it is?" asked his companion.

      "About three."

      "What a night!" she murmured.

      "You're dead right!" said Greg grimly. He remembered what he carried behind and shivered.

      They sped down town over the smooth pavement of Broadway. That erstwhile busy street was deserted now except for an occasional motor car like themselves roaring up or down with wide open throttle and except for the ubiquitous cats prowling diagonally across from curb to curb on errands known to themselves. The street lamps shone down like moons as indifferently upon solitude as upon crowds; all the shop fronts were dark.

      Greg, it need hardly be said, was fairly eaten up with curiosity concerning his passenger, yet he could not question her. Her air of friendliness and confidence disarmed him. Questions implied a doubt. She volunteered no information about herself, but seemed to feel the necessity of saying something.

      "Perhaps I ought to be riding in behind."

      "Oh, no!" said Greg very quickly.

      "Well, I thought it might look odd, my sitting here in front."

      "Why shouldn't a taxi-driver be giving a friend a lift, especially at this time of night?"

      This seemed to make her uneasy. She said: "All right; but you know I'm hiring you really, just like anybody."

      Greg felt a most unreasonable hurt. "I didn't ask for any pay," he said gruffly.

      She was distressed. "Oh, you mustn't let your feelings be hurt! I've got to pay you, you know. You don't know anything about me."

      Greg answered with a look that meant: "I'd like to!" But she did not take the hint. Aloud he said: "I won't take anything."

      She let the matter drop.

      The cab they were following drew up at the great Hotel Meriden at Eightieth Street.

      "I thought so," murmured the girl. "He is stopping here. The chase is over for to-night. Drive on for a block or two, then come back. It will give him a chance to get to his room."

      Greg obeyed. As they returned and circled in front of the hotel she said:

      "Don't stop at the entrance. Go on to the end of the building and wait there."

      They came to a stop opposite the last of the great windows that lighted the lobby and the lounge of the Meriden. Greg wondered, if the chase were over, what they were to wait for. The answer came directly, conveying an important bit of information obliquely.

      She said, pointing to two lighted windows on the third floor of the hotel: "I daren't go in until he goes to bed. Do you mind if I wait here with you?"

      "Do I mind—!" said Greg.

      His tone was perhaps a little too warm. She glanced at him suspiciously. Greg tried to look unconscious. Meanwhile he was revolving the significance of what she had just said. So she lived here too, and was, she implied, a member of the tall foreigner's household. It occurred to Greg that her speech resembled the man's: they used the same phrases as people do who live together. Certainly in no other respect was there any likeness. Greg frowned. He resented the thought that man and girl might be related.

      She broke in on his thoughts by saying in her abrupt, boyish way: "You don't seem like a common taxi-driver."

      "Well, I haven't been one long," said Greg smiling.

      He reflected that the surest way to win a person's confidence is to offer one's own, and he proceeded to tell her the story of his meeting with Hickey Meech, and how they had changed places, stopping short, however, of the grim dénouement.

      The girl was charmed. "Oh, I like that!" she cried bright-eyed. "I'm glad you didn't want to leave America! I love America. I'm an American."

      He wondered a little what impelled her to state this fact so defiantly, as if it had been called in question. It cheered him though, for certainly the man they had been following was not an American. So they could not be close relatives.

      "I'm so glad it was you!" she went on.

      "So am I!" he said smiling.

      "A person like you can understand."

      "But I understand nothing."

      "Ah, don't ask me!" she said with a painful air. "I can't explain. It's a family affair!"

      That put Greg back where he had started from. He was silenced but not satisfied.

      "Suppose I need you again?" she asked. "Would you be willing——?"

      "Try me!"

      "How can I get you?"

      "Well, I haven't any address yet. The man I bought the cab from told me where he kept it, and I suppose I'll hang out there. Have you anything to write it down with?"

      She nodded, and produced a tiny note-book and pencil.

      "Elmer Fishback," he began.

      She wrote it down, smiling to herself at the comical sound of the syllables.

      "My right name is Gregory Parr," he hastily added.

      "That's better," she said.

      He continued: "Care of Bessie Bickle—he didn't say whether she was Miss or Mrs."

      "I'll just put B. Bickle."

      "Gibbon Street south of Houston."

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