XI

"DAN"----QUIXOTE

Leaving the hotel, Maitland strode quietly but rapidly across the
car-tracks to the sidewalk bordering the park. A dozen nighthawk cabbies
bore down upon him, yelping in chorus. He motioned to the foremost, jumped
into the hansom and gave the fellow his address.

"Five dollars," he added, "if you make it in five minutes."

An astonished horse, roused from a droop-eared lethargy, was yanked almost
by main strength out of the cab-rank and into the middle of the Avenue.
Before he could recover, the long whip-lash had leaped out over the roof
of the vehicle, and he found himself stretching away up the Avenue on a
dead run.

Yet to Maitland the pace seemed deadly slow. He fidgeted on the seat in an
agony of impatience, a dozen times feeling in his waistcoat pocket for his
latch-keys. They were there, and his fingers itched to use them.

By the lights streaking past he knew that their pace was furious, and was
haunted by a fear lest it should bring the police about his ears. At
Twenty-ninth Street, indeed, a dreaming policeman, startled by the uproar,
emerged hastily from the sheltering gloom of a store-entrance, shouted
after the cabby an inarticulate question, and, getting no response,
unsheathed his night-stick and loped up the Avenue in pursuit, making the
locust sing upon the pavement at every jump.