Excuse Me!

by Rupert Hughes.

CHAPTER I

THE WRECK OF THE TAXICAB

The young woman in the taxicab scuttling frantically down the dark street, clung to the arm of the young man alongside, as if she were terrified at the lawbreaking, neck-risking speed. But evidently some greater 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 he thrust his head and shoulders through the window in the door.

But the self-created taxi-gale swept his voice aft, and the taut chauffeur 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 of reproach into that pa.s.senger. 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 perfectly respectable 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 at the axle, went reeling down the sidewalk half a block before it leaned against a tree and rested.

A dozen or more miracles coincided to save the pa.s.sengers from injury.

The young man found himself standing on the pavement with the unhinged door still around his neck. The young woman's arms were round his neck. Her head was on his shoulder. It had reposed there often enough, but never before in the street under a lamppost. The chauffeur found himself in the road, walking about on all fours, like a bewildered quadruped.

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

"What time is it, honey?"

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

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

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

The consideration of this riddle was interrupted by a m.u.f.fled hubbub of yelps, whimpers, and canine hysterics. Immediately the young woman forgot ministers, collisions, train-schedules--everything. She showed her first sign of panic.

"Snoozleums! Get Snoozleums!"

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

About this time the chauffeur came prowling into view. He was too deeply shocked to emit any language of the garage. He was too deeply shocked 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 long street 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 s.e.x than in scorn for this one type, as he mumbled:

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

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 a bandage on the chauffeur's hand. The chauffeur decided that the young woman was even nicer than the young man. But he could not settle on a way to say to it. So he said nothing, and grinned sheepishly as he said it.

The young man named Harry was wondering how they were to proceed. He had 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," the chauffeur ventured. "I come this way because you wanted me to take a short cut."

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

The place of their shipwreck was so deserted that not even a crowd had gathered. The racket of the collision had not brought a single policeman. They were in a dead world of granite warehouses, wholesale stores and factories, all locked and forbidding, and full of silent gloom.

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

The three castaways stared every which way, and every which way was peace. The ghost of a pedestrian or two hurried by in the far distance. 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 m.u.f.fled rumble and the faint clang of a bell. Somewhere a street car was b.u.mping 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, and set out, calling back to the chauffeur: