The driver gasped.

"You see," Maitland continued with a courteous smile, "I have two
engagements: one at Sherry's, the other with the ten-twenty train
from Long Island City. What would you, as man to man, advise me to
do, cabby?"

"Well, sir, seein' as you puts it to me straight," returned the
cabby with engaging candor, "I'd go home, sir, if I was you, afore
I got any worse."

"Thank you," gravely. "Long Island City depot, then, cabby."

Maitland extended himself languidly upon the cushions. "Surely,"
he told the night, "the driver knows best--he and Bannerman."

The cab started off jogging so sedately up Madison Avenue that
Maitland glanced at his watch and elevated his brows dubiously;
then with his stick poked open the trap in the roof.

"If you really think it best for me to go home, cabby, you'll have
to drive like hell," he suggested mildly.

"Yessir!"

A whip-lash cracked loudly over the horse's back, and the hansom,
lurching into Thirty-fourth Street on one wheel, was presently
jouncing eastward over rough cobbles, at a regardless pace which
roused the gongs of the surface cars to a clangor of hysterical
expostulation. In a trice the "L" extension was roaring overhead;