“Tonight.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Well, I usually pick a downtown hotel, but I ain’t registered yet. Just came in from a trip, you know.”
“Starting any more wagons?”
“Expect to, soon.”
The talk drifted a bit. Harry had finished his coffee. The beefy-faced man had gulped down two sandwiches and had swallowed a cupful of tea. He rose and walked to the door, with Harry following.
As they neared the cab, another taxi drew up and the driver alighted.
“Hello, English Johnny,” the driver called.
“Hello, boy.”
The driver gazed curiously at Harry Vincent, but said nothing. Harry felt rather ill at ease. Perhaps he should greet this other man.
English Johnny detected the glance of the newcomer, but the taxi driver was evidently a mere acquaintance, and not a friend. Harry climbed into the cab and held the door open for English Johnny.
They rolled beneath the elevated. Harry stepped on the accelerator. It would be best to deliver the man in back before any trouble might arise. The street was deserted; this was a time for speed.
He went past a corner. English Johnny whistled at him. Harry slowed down.
“Where you taking me, fellow?” asked the beefy-faced man. “This ain’t the shortest way. Cut over to the left. Don’t you know your New York?”
“Not all of it, sir.”
“Looks like you don’t know none of it.”
Harry swung to the left; as he did so, a passing car honked warningly. There followed the grinding of brakes, and the other automobile narrowly missed a collision with one of the elevated posts.
An oath issued from the other car. Its driver stepped from one door and a policeman from the other. Harry was stopped in the middle of the street.
“What’s the idea?” demanded the policeman.
“Just turning left,” said Vincent.
“Where was your hand?”
“I had it out,” answered Harry truthfully.
The officer turned to his companion.
“Did you see him put his hand out?”
“No’” said the other man. “I’m glad I was giving you a lift, officer. You can see what we drivers are up against. These taxis think they own the streets. Why don’t you run him in?”
The policeman glowered at Vincent. He looked as though he was sorry there had not been an accident. He seemed to be after an excuse to make an arrest.
“Get out your driver’s license,” he said. “Show me your certificates.”
Vincent fumbled in the pocket of his uniform. He half expected to find the credentials there. Then he realized that he would be unable to sign properly - doubtless the officer would require that.
This was something that had not been anticipated; evidently no provision had been made for it. The pocket was empty.
“One chance in a million,” thought Vincent. “One chance that I would run into a mess like this.”
The policeman was opening the back door of the car.
“Let’s take a look at your mug back here,” Vincent heard him say.
“Do you mean me?” came the voice of English Johnny.
“No. I mean the picture of this bum driver you have in the license frame. But I’ll look you over, too if you want. What’s your name?”
“Well,” came the reply, “my name’s Harmon; but most of the boys know me by the title of English Johnny.”
The policeman looked up.
“English Johnny!”
“Sure.”
“The fellow that owns the lunch wagons?”
“The same one. I know some big men on the force, too.”
“I’ve heard that. Say, what’ll I do with this driver you’ve got here?”
“Let him take me out to my place, first. He’s been long enough getting me there.”
The officer laughed.
“Drive along,” he said to Harry. “This gentleman wants to get home.”
“What about running him in?” asked the man from the other car.
“Forget it,” said the policeman.
Vincent put the car in gear and drove hurriedly away. The interruption of English Johnny had been fortunate. He hoped there would be no more complications.
Just then another whistle from the back seat broke in on Harry’s thoughts.
“Pull up by the curb here,” came the voice of his passenger. Harry obeyed the order.
English Johnny stepped out of the door - he had ordered Harry to the left side of the street - now he looked sharply at the driver of the cab, whose face was clearly visible beneath the light of a street lamp.
“Listen here, fellow,” demanded English Johnny, “are you trying to give me the run-around?”
“No, sir,” replied Vincent.
“It looks like you were.”
“Why?”
“Because you talk like you know the streets, and yet you’ve been getting mixed up every few blocks.”
Vincent decided that a taxi driver would answer this sort of talk with some emphatic statements of his own. So he tried it.
“Maybe I know the streets better than you,” he growled in a sullen voice. “I’m driving the cab. I know my business.”
“Maybe you’re all right,” replied English Johnny, as though half convinced. “I just wanted to make sure.”
“I’m all right.”
“Well, you kinda got into trouble back there at the elevated.”
“That’s all in the day’s work. Every cab driver runs into mix-ups like that.”
“Well, you acted kinda funny. Then, when you got lost again, I thought I’d better see what it was all about. I ain’t trusting myself with no half-drunk taxi driver.
“I haven’t been drinking.”
“I know that now, bud. Still, things ain’t right - least, they don’t seem that way to me.”
“Why not?”
“You ain’t handling the car like you knew where you were going.”
Harry was silent.
“Tell me where we are going,” demanded English Johnny. “What was the address I gave you?”
Harry was about to blurt out the reply when he sensed something in the man’s pugnacious red face. He knew instinctively that English Johnny was suspicious. For some reason the man was sorry that he had given his address to this strange taxi driver.
“Come on!” English Johnny persisted. “Where did I tell you to take me?”
“I can’t remember, sir,” replied Vincent.
“You don’t remember?”
“No, sir.”
“What kind of a taxi driver are you, anyway?”
“I’m an all-right driver; I just forgot the address you gave. All I can remember is East One Hundred and Something Street. I was figuring on asking you again when we got up around the Nineties.”
“So that’s it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Didn’t you check up on the number when I gave it to you - back where I got in the cab? Repeat it to yourself, I mean, so you wouldn’t forget it?”
“No, sir. I didn’t catch it exactly when you gave it to me. Then we stopped at the lunch wagon; and after that trouble back on the avenue, I got so mixed up that I couldn’t even remember the street you told me.”
Another taxi pulled up in back of Vincent’s cab. The driver came forward to listen to the argument.
“What’s the row?” the fellow asked Harry.
“Don’t ask him,” interrupted English Johnny. “He wouldn’t know.”
“How so?” asked the newcomer, surveying the beefy-faced man suspiciously. That was natural enough, Harry thought. One taxi driver would side with another.
“Looka here, bud,” said English Johnny. “I gotta right to be taken straight to a place, ain’t I? But this fellow ain’t doing it. He admits he forgot the number I gave him. I don’t believe he ever drove a cab before.”
“Show him your licenses, pal,” said the taxi man.
“That’s right,” English Johnny chimed in. “Show ‘em to me.”
Harry fumbled in his pocket, playing for time.
“He hasn’t got ‘em,” jeered English Johnny. “I shoulda let the cop run him in. He’s a phony.”
The other man was studying Harry curiously.
“I guess you’re right,” he admitted. “He don’t look like a regular taxi man. What’s the racket, fellow? There’s been a lot of cabs snatched off the street lately. You pulling that game?”