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Page 26
Stepping aside, as if in alarm, she moved behind the fellow, and
darted through the gate.
"I don't," P. Sybarite admitted amiably; "but your nose annoys me."
He fixed that feature with an irritating glare.
"You impudent puppy!" stormed the other. "Who are you?"
"Who--me?" echoed P. Sybarite in surprise. (The girl was now
instructing the chauffeur.) "Why," he drawled, "I'm the guy that put
the point in disappointment. Sure you've heard of _me_?"
At the curb, the door of the taxicab closed with a slam.
Simultaneously the drone of the motor thickened to a rumble. The man
with the twisted mouth turned just in time to see it drawing away.
"_Hi!_" he cried in surprise and dismay.
But the taxi didn't pause; to the contrary, it stretched out toward
Ninth Avenue at a quickening pace.
With profanity appreciating the fact that he had been tricked, he
picked up his heels in pursuit. But P. Sybarite had not finished with
him. Deftly plucking the man back by the tail of his full-skirted
opera coat, he succeeded in arresting his flight before it was fairly
started.
"Here!" he protested. "What's your hurry?"
With a vicious snarl, the man turned and snatched at his cloak. But P.
Sybarite adhered tenaciously to the coat.
"We were discussing your nose--"
At discretion, he interrupted himself to duck beneath the swing of a
powerful fist. And this last, failing to find a mark, threw its owner
off his balance. Tripping awkwardly over the low curbing of the
dooryard walk, he reeled and went a-sprawl on his knees, while his hat
fell off and (such is the impish habit of toppers) rolled and bounded
several feet away.
Releasing the cloak, P. Sybarite withdrew to a respectful remove and
held himself coolly alert against reprisals that never came. The other
picked himself up quickly, cast about for the taxicab, discovered it
swiftly making off--already twenty yards distant--and with a howl of
rage bounded through the gate and gave chase at the top of his speed.
Gravely, P. Sybarite retrieved the hat and followed to the curbing.
"Hey!" he shouted after the fast retreating figure--"here's your
_hat_!"
But he wasted breath. The taxicab was nearing Ninth Avenue, its
pursuer sprinting bravely a hundred feet to the rear, and as he
watched, both turned the northern corner and vanished like shapes of
dream.
Sighing, P. Sybarite went back to the stoop and sat down to consider
the state of his soul (which was vain-glorious) and the condition of
the hat (which was soiled, rumpled, and disreputable).
VIII
WHEELS OF CHANCE
Turning the affair over in his mind, and considering it from every
imaginable angle, P. Sybarite decided (fairly enough) that it was, on
the whole, mysterious; lending at least some colour of likelihood to
George's gratuitous guess-work.
Certainly it would seem that one had now every right to assume Miss
Molly Lessing to be other than as she chose to seem; nowadays the
villain in shining evening dress doesn't pursue the shrinking
shop-girl save through the action of the obsolescent mellerdrammer or
of the ubiquitous moving-picture reel. So much must at least be said
for these great educators: they have broken the villain of his
open-face attire; to-day he knows better, and when prowling to devour,
disguises himself in the guileless if nobby "sack suit" of the widely
advertised Kollege Kut brand....
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