A taxicab is not a vehicle for speed; but it is designed for quick turn and prompt control. Lamont Cranston, calmly smoking a cigarette in the back seat, smiled as he felt the cab swerve around another corner.
Lamont Cranston leaned into the front seat.
“When you come to the house I left, stop there,” he said. “I am going back.”
“Oh,” exclaimed the driver. For a moment he thought that the pursuing car was imaginary. “Shall I go slower, sir?”
“On the contrary,” replied Cranston calmly, “I would appreciate it if you would go faster.”
The cab whirled along the avenue. It was approaching the corner where it must turn to reach Zuvor’s house. Cranston again spoke through the window.
“Take this one corner slowly,” he remarked. “It is rather dangerous.”
The driver nodded approvingly. The avenue turned at an angle at the point mentioned. The corner was indeed a bad one. The cab was nearing it now.
The driver applied his brakes with a jolt. The cab skidded slightly, as it came to a standstill; then the taximan swung the wheel, and the cab leaped forward like a living creature.
As it shot down the street, a sedan turned from the avenue, in close pursuit.
THE driver stopped his cab suddenly in front of Prince Zuvor’s house. Leaping from his seat, he opened the door. At that instant, the sedan came up behind.
The taximan stepped back in amazement. Then he reached in, and turned on the light. To his utter astonishment, the back of the cab was empty!
The man’s bewilderment was observed from the sedan. A tall, broad-shouldered fellow stepped to the sidewalk, and approached the cab.
“What’s the matter, bud?” he asked.
“The matter!” ejaculated the cab driver, forgetting all about the recent pursuit. “I had a passenger in here a minute ago. Now he’s gone!”
With an oath, the other man dashed back to the sedan. The big car swung around, and climbed the curb on the opposite side of the street, making its turn with the greatest possible speed.
It shot up toward the avenue; and just as it arrived, a cab left the corner. A man was staring through the back window. The sedan moved in immediate pursuit.
Lamont Cranston laughed slightly, as he rolled along in the new cab. A freak of fate had spoiled his little game.
He had left the first cab, when it had stopped so suddenly at the corner of Prince Zuvor’s street. He had cleverly avoided observation of those in the sedan. He had led them back to Prince Zuvor’s house — to the end of a blind trail.
But he had reckoned on another cab at the corner; and none had been there. It had been more than a minute before a cab had come along; and in that space of time, the occupants of the sedan had learned their mistake, and had taken up the chase anew.
The driver of this cab was as reckless as the other. He displayed a marvelous knowledge of upper New York. Picking streets with remarkable precision, he seemed always to arrive at a corner while a green light was burning.
Once, he left the sedan confronting a light which turned red as the taxi passed; but Lamont Cranston, glancing backward, saw that the pursuers paid no attention to the stop signal at the crossing.
The taximan knew it, too; and he tried the plan again; this time to better avail. He shot over a crossing as the light was changing.
There was a traffic officer here, and the cab driver chuckled at the plight of the sedan. Now he was earning his ten-spot. They would get away this time!
“Well done,” complimented Cranston. “Now drive slowly. Take it quite easily, until you have passed the next corner.”
The driver was completely bewildered. This man who had seemed so anxious to get away was now deliberately enticing and aiding the pursuing car!
IN fact, the sedan was close behind, when the cab resumed its speed. The driver, catching a slight advantage, put a half a block between himself and the pursuers.
A few blocks later, the cab stopped. It was well ahead of the sedan; yet the passenger seemed in no hurry to leave. He stepped slowly from the cab; gave the driver another bill, and watched him pull away.
Then, as the sedan whirled up the street toward him, Lamont Cranston calmly stepped into a limousine that was parked a few feet away. The chauffeur, dozing at the wheel, woke up instantly as he heard the door close. He looked back with a startled expression.
“Take me to the Landis Club,” said Lamont Cranston, in a deep voice. “Hurry, Wilkes. Move along.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the chauffeur.
He turned the limousine into the traffic, skimming the front of the pursuing sedan as he did. Lamont Cranston was scarcely visible in the back seat. But he was moving in the darkness. His hands were lifting a package from the floor.
Ten minutes later, the limousine rolled grandly up to the entrance of the Landis Club, which was fronted by a canopy that stretched across the sidewalk. The sedan pulled into a vacant space behind, and waited there.
THE car starter was busy at the moment; then he saw the limousine, and hurried to open the door. No one stepped out. The starter spoke to the chauffeur.
“Have you come for some one?” he questioned.
The chauffeur looked bewildered.
“I’m bringing Mr. Krause,” he said. “Didn’t he get out?”
“There’s no one in the car,” replied the starter.
The chauffeur alighted, and looked into the back of the limousine, with unbelieving eyes. At the same time, a man emerged from the inconspicuous sedan, and strolled up toward the limousine.
“Blame me,” said the chauffeur. “I’ve been dreamin’, that’s what! I would ha’ swore that Mr. Krause was in the car there. You’re sure he didn’t get out?”
“Positive!” snapped the starter. “He’s not there now, that’s certain.”
The chauffeur looked at his watch.
“Early for him at that,” he said. “Just the same, I can’t figger it. He got out where he always leaves me, an’ left me waitin’ there. Funny thing, too; just after he left, I thought he came back, but it wasn’t nobody at all.
“Then I went to sleep; couple hours. Then he gets in the car, wakes me up, an’ tells me to bring him here.
“Blame me, it’s funny. Yet it ain’t time for the theater to be out. Guess I’d better be goin’ back.”
He took a last look in the back of the limousine; his eyes saw a piece of wrapping paper. He brought it out; looked at it, and dropped it on the street.
“Looks like somebody had a package in there,” he said. “They must ha’ opened it, an’ left the wrappin’.”
His final remarks were addressed to a few bystanders; the starter had left.
“It sounded like Mr. Krause, all right,” continued the chauffeur. “‘Take me to the Landis Club. Hurry, Wilkes,’ he says. I ought to know his voice when I hears it. Yet it must ha’ been me dreamin’.”
The chauffeur returned to the limousine, and drove away, still shaking his head in bewilderment. Yet he had propounded one theory which was correct.
There had been a package in the car; it had been placed there early in the evening, just after Mr. Krause had left the limousine. That same package had been opened — while the chauffeur was driving to the Landis Club.
Its contents had been a black cloak, and that cloak had been donned by the man who had ridden in the car. Lamont Cranston had slipped from the door opposite the curb, just as the limousine had pulled up to the Landis Club.
He had been nothing more than a shape of the night — a shadowy, sable figure, that seemed clothed with a garment of invisibility.
THE sedan remained a while after the limousine had gone. The man who had left it had returned. He watched the street on both sides.