Excuse Me!, Page 2

  CHAPTER I

  THE WRECK OF THE TAXICAB

  The young woman in the taxicab scuttling frantically down the darkstreet, clung to the arm of the young man alongside, as if she wereterrified at the lawbreaking, neck-risking speed. But evidently somegreater fear goaded her, for she gasped:

  "Can't he go a little faster?"

  "Can't you go a little faster?" The young man alongside howled as hethrust his head and shoulders through the window in the door.

  But the self-created taxi-gale swept his voice aft, and the tautchauffeur perked his ear in vain to catch the vanishing syllables.

  "What's that?" he roared.

  "Can't you go a little faster?"

  The indignant charioteer simply had to shoot one barbed glare ofreproach into that passenger. He turned his head and growled:

  "Say, do youse want to lose me me license?"

  For just one instant he turned his head. One instant was just enough.The unguarded taxicab seized the opportunity, bolted from the track,and flung, as it were, its arms drunkenly around a perfectlyrespectable lamppost attending strictly to its business on the curb.There ensued a condensed Fourth of July. Sparks flew, tires exploded,metals ripped, two wheels spun in air and one wheel, neatly severed atthe axle, went reeling down the sidewalk half a block before it leanedagainst a tree and rested.

  A dozen or more miracles coincided to save the passengers from injury.The young man found himself standing on the pavement with the unhingeddoor still around his neck. The young woman's arms were round hisneck. Her head was on his shoulder. It had reposed there often enough,but never before in the street under a lamppost. The chauffeur foundhimself in the road, walking about on all fours, like a bewilderedquadruped.

  Evidently some overpowering need for speed possessed the young woman,for even now she did not scream, she did not faint, she did notmurmur, "Where am I?" She simply said:

  "What time is it, honey?"

  And the young man, not realizing how befuddled he really was, or howhis hand trembled, fetched out his watch and held it under the glow ofthe lamppost, which was now bent over in a convenient but disreputableattitude.

  "A quarter to ten, sweetheart. Plenty of time for the train."

  "But the minister, honey! What about the minister? How are we going toget to the minister?"

  The consideration of this riddle was interrupted by a muffled hubbubof yelps, whimpers, and canine hysterics. Immediately the young womanforgot ministers, collisions, train-schedules--everything. She showedher first sign of panic.

  "Snoozleums! Get Snoozleums!"

  They groped about in the topsy-turvy taxicab, rummaged among a jumbleof suitcases, handbags, umbrellas and minor _impedimenta_, and fishedout a small dog-basket with an inverted dog inside. Snoozleums wasridiculous in any position, but as he slid tail foremost from thewicker basket, he resembled nothing so much as a heap of tangled yarntumbling out of a work-basket. He was an indignant skein, and had muchto say before he consented to snuggle under his mistress' chin.

  About this time the chauffeur came prowling into view. He was toodeeply shocked to emit any language of the garage. He was too deeplyshocked to achieve any comment more brilliant than:

  "That mess don't look much like it ever was a taxicab, does it?"

  The young man shrugged his shoulders, and stared up and down the longstreet for another. The young woman looked sorrowfully at the wreck,and queried:

  "Do you think you can make it go?"

  The chauffeur glanced her way, more in pity for her whole sex than inscorn for this one type, as he mumbled:

  "Make it go? It'll take a steam winch a week to unwrap it from thatlamppost."

  The young man apologized.

  "I oughtn't to have yelled at you."

  He was evidently a very nice young man. Not to be outdone in courtesy,the chauffeur retorted:

  "I hadn't ought to have turned me head."

  The young woman thought, "What a nice chauffeur!" but she gasped:"Great heavens, you're hurt!"

  "It's nuttin' but a scratch on me t'umb."

  "Lend me a clean handkerchief, Harry."

  The young man whipped out his reserve supply, and in a trice it was abandage on the chauffeur's hand. The chauffeur decided that the youngwoman was even nicer than the young man. But he could not settle on away to say to it. So he said nothing, and grinned sheepishly as hesaid it.

  The young man named Harry was wondering how they were to proceed. Hehad already studied the region with dismay, when the girl resolved:

  "We'll have to take another taxi, Harry."

  "Yes, Marjorie, but we can't take it till we get it."

  "You might wait here all night wit'out ketchin' a glimp' of one," thechauffeur ventured. "I come this way because you wanted me to take ashort cut."

  "It's the longest short cut I ever saw," the young man sighed, as hegazed this way and that.

  The place of their shipwreck was so deserted that not even a crowd hadgathered. The racket of the collision had not brought a singlepoliceman. They were in a dead world of granite warehouses, wholesalestores and factories, all locked and forbidding, and full of silentgloom.

  In the daytime this was a big trade-artery of Chicago, and all daylong it was thunderous with trucks and commerce. At night it wasPompeii, so utterly abandoned that the night watchmen rarely sleptoutside, and no footpad found it worth while to set up shop.

  The three castaways stared every which way, and every which way waspeace. The ghost of a pedestrian or two hurried by in the fardistance. A cat or two went furtively in search of warfare or romance.The lampposts stretched on and on in both directions in two forevers.

  In the faraway there was a muffled rumble and the faint clang of abell. Somewhere a street car was bumping along its rails.

  "Our only hope," said Harry. "Come along, Marjorie."

  He handed the chauffeur five dollars as a poultice to his wounds,tucked the girl under one arm and the dog-basket under the other, andset out, calling back to the chauffeur:

  "Good night!"

  "Good night!" the girl called back.

  "Good night!" the chauffeur echoed. He stood watching them with thetender gaze that even a chauffeur may feel for young love hastening toa honeymoon.

  He stood beaming so, till their footsteps died in the silence. Then heturned back to the chaotic remnants of his machine. He worked at ithopelessly for some time, before he had reason to look within. Therehe found the handbags and suitcases, umbrellas and other equipment. Heran to the corner to call after the owners. They were as absent ofbody as they had been absent of mind.

  He remembered the street-number they had given him as theirdestination. He waited till at last a yawning policeman sauntered thatway like a lonely beach patrol, and left him in charge while he wentto telephone his garage for a wagon and a wrecking crew.

  It was close on midnight before he reached the number his fares hadgiven him. It was a parsonage leaning against a church. He rang thebell and finally produced from an upper window a nightshirt topped bya frowsy head. He explained the situation, and his possession ofcertain properties belonging to parties unknown except by their firstnames. The clergyman drowsily murmured:

  "Oh, yes. I remember. The young man was Lieutenant Henry Mallory, andhe said he would stop here with a young lady, and get married on theway to the train. But they never turned up."

  "Lieutenant Mallory, eh? Where could I reach him?"

  "He said he was leaving to-night for the Philippines."

  "The Philippines! Well, I'll be----"

  The minister closed the window just in time.