CHAPTER 6: A MATTER OF BUTTONS
WHEN Drayton and his friends walked through the Ulithian "moon," none of them were either quite unconscious nor entirely devoid of sense. Drayton for instance, knew that Viola extended her hand to him; that he took it and that her other hand was held by some one else, an indistinct personality whose identity was of not the slightest interest or importance.
They all knew that with the dizzying fragrance of a million blossoms in their nostrils; with blinding radiance before them; with behind them only silence and the silver plain, they three joined hands and so passed beneath the black arch which had seemed a moon.
This dim apprehension, however, was wholly dreamlike, and unmingled with thought or foreboding. They possessed no faint curiosity, even, as to what might lie beyond that incredible archway.
Active consciousness returned like the shock of a thunderbolt.
They had emerged upon the sidewalk of a wide, paved street. They were but three of a jostling, hurrying throng of very ordinary and solid-looking mortals.
For several moments they experienced a bewilderment even greater than had come upon them in passing from a prosaic house on Walnut Street into the uncanny romance land which they knew as "Ulithia." The roar and rattle which now assailed their ears deafened and dazed them. Ulithia had been so silent, so unhuman and divorced from all familiar associations, that in this abrupt escape from it they felt helpless; unpoised as countryfolk who have never seen a city, and to whom its crowds are confusing and vaguely hostile.
In this new place there was none of that bright, dazzling mist which had filled the archway. Instead, it was well and more satisfactorily illuminated by numerous arc lamps. With a thundering clatter an electric train rushed past almost directly overhead.
Before them, the street was a tangle of dodging pedestrians, heavy motor trucks loaded with freight and baggage, arriving and departing autos, and desperately clanging street cars. Above, iron pillars and girders supported an elevated railway system. Close to where they stood a narrow moving stairway carried upward its perpetual stream of passengers, bound for that upper level of traffic where the electric train had passed.
Turning, the dazed wanderers saw behind them, not any vast expanse of silver light, but the wall of a long, low building, pierced with many windows and several doors. From one of those doors, apparently, they had just emerged.
With some difficulty the three extricated themselves from the throng. Finding a comparatively quiet spot by the wall of the building they stood there, very close together.
Suddenly Viola gave a sharp exclamation.
"But this-this is Philadelphia! This is the entrance to the Market Street Ferry in Philadelphia!"
Her brother slapped his thigh.
"And to think I did not recognize a place I've been at myself at least three times! But who would have thought we'd get home so easy-or at the other end of the city from where we started?"
Suddenly the melancholy ex-lawyer chuckled aloud.
"I never thought," he said, "that Philadelphia, city of homes or not, would seem homelike to me. By George, I realize now what a charming old place it is! Terry, couldn't you resign wandering and settle down here for the rest of your life-right on this spot, if necessary?"
The Irishman grinned cheerfully.
"I could that, so be there were not a few better spots to be got at. Viola, I'm fair dead of hunger and so must you both be. Is there a cafe in this elegant station building? Or shall we go home and trust Martin? Heaven bless the boy! I never thought to see him again-trust Martin to throw us together some sort of sustaining meal?"
"I'm hungry," confessed Viola frankly, "but it seems to me we should go straight to Cousin Jim's house, rather than to a restaurant. You know that gray powder was left there-"
Trenmore gave a great start and his smile faded.
"That devil dust!" he burst forth. "And all this time it's been laying open and unguarded! Faith, after all we may not find poor Martin to welcome us home!"
"My fault again," said Drayton grimly. "If anything has happened to Martin, I am entirely to blame. In common justice I shall have to follow him-"
Trenmore turned with a growl. "You will not follow him! Is it an endless chain you would establish between this world and that heathenish outland we've escaped from? You after Martin, and myself after you, and Viola after me, I suppose-and there we'll all be again, with nothing to eat and no one but spooks to converse with! No; if Martin is in Ulithia this minute, may his wits and his luck bring him out of it. At least, he's the same chance we had."
"Call a taxi," suggested Viola practically. "It's just possible that Martin hasn't yet fallen into the trap."
"A very sensible suggestion, my dear," commended her brother.
By the curb stood an empty taxicab, its driver loafing near by. The latter was a thin, underfed-looking fellow, clad in a rather startlingly brilliant livery of pale blue and lemon yellow, with a small gilt insignia on the sleeve. A languid cigarette drooped from his lips. Beside his gaudy attire he wore that air of infinite leisure, combined with an eye scornfully alert, with which all true taxi drivers are born.
"Seventeen hundred Walnut Street, my man," directed Trenmore, "and get up what speed you're able."
Drayton had started to open the cab door, since the chauffeur made no move to do so. To his surprise, however, the latter sprang forward and pushed his hand aside.
"You wait a minute, gentlemen!"
"Is this cab engaged? You have the 'Empty' sign out."
"No, we ain't engaged; but wait a minute!"
The fellow was eying them with a curiosity oddly like suspicion. Surely there was little out of the way in their appearance. Viola's attire was the picture of modern propriety. In crossing that ghostly plain nothing had occurred to destroy the respectable appearance with which they had all begun the journey.
"Wait!" ejaculated Trenmore. "And what for? Isn't this a public cab?"
"Yes; it's a public cab, right enough. There ain't nothing the matter with me nor my cab either. The trouble's with you. Why ain't you wearin' your buttons?"
"Wearing our buttons?"
Terence glanced frantically down over himself. Had the rapid transition from one world to another actually removed those necessary adornments from his garments? Everything looked in order. He glanced up angrily.
"Not wearing our buttons, is it? And what in the devil do you mean by that, you fool? Is it fuddled with drink you are?"
The chauffeur's alert eye measured the Irishman. It's owner shrank back against the cab.
"Don't you!" he cried. "Don't you hit me! I don't care who you are, you haven't any right to go about that way. You hit me, and you'll go to the pit for it! I've drove more than one of the Service itself, and they won't stand fer nobody beatin' me up!"
Drayton caught the half-raised arm of his friend.
"Don't, Terry," he cautioned softly. "Why start a row with a lunatic?"
Trenmore shook him off. He was doubly annoyed by Drayton's assumption that he would attack a man of less than half his weight. For an instant he felt inclined to quarrel with his friend on the spot. Then the petty childishness of his irritation struck him, and catching Viola's appealing and astonished glance, he laughed shamefacedly.
"I left my temper behind the moon, Bobby," he grinned, as the three started off down the sidewalk in search of another vehicle. "Somewhere along here there's a bit of an office booth of the taxicab company's. Isn't that it, beyond the escalator?"
"Yes," contributed Viola. "I remember there's a sign over it. 'Quaker City'-Why, but they've changed it to 'Penn Service!' Last week it was the Quaker City Company."
Whether "Penn Service," however, meant taxi service or something different they were not to learn just then. Before they reached the wooden booth beneath that white-lettered signboard, a heavy hand had grasped Drayton's arm from behind, whirling him about. The two others also turned and found themselves confronted by a police officer. At a safe distance in the rear their eccentric acquaintance, the chauffeur, looked on with a satisfied grin.