few minutes he opened the door again and spoke to me.

"Now, sport," he said, "there ain't no use thinkin' about
gettin' that train, because it's gone, and I may as well say now
that you've got to come with me, unless you want me to smash your
head in. The fact is, this ain't no public automobile, and I
hadn't no right to take you for a passenger. This automobile
belongs to a lady and I'm her hired chauffeur, and she's at a
bridge-whist party in a house on Fifth Avenue, and I'm supposed
to be waiting outside that house. One-fifteen o'clock was the
time she said she would be out. But I thought maybe I might make
a dollar or two for myself instead of waiting there all that
time, and she would never know it. And now it is nearly two
o'clock, and if I go back alone she will be raving mad, and I'll
get my discharge and no references, and my poor wife and six
children will have to starve. So you will have to go with me and
explain how it was that I wasn't there at one-fifteen o'clock."

"My friend," I said, "I am sorry for you, but I do not see how
it would help you, should I refuse to go and you should, as you
say, smash my head in."

"Don't you worry none about that," he said. "If I smashed your
head in, as I could do easy enough with this wrench, I'd take
what was left of you up some dark street, and lay you on the
pavement and run the machine across you once or twice, and then
take you to a hospital, and that would be excuse enough. You'd be
another 'Killed by an Automobile,' and I'd be the hero that
picked you up and took you to the hospital."