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Page 61
Whimpering with rage, P. Sybarite tugged at the weapon; but it stuck
fast, caught the lining of his coat-pocket.
Most happily before he could get it in evidence, the door was thrust
sharply in, and through it with a rush materialised that most rare of
metropolitan phenomena--the policeman on the spot.
Young and ardent, with courage as unique as his ubiquity, he blustered
in like a whirlwind, brushing P. Sybarite to one side, the wounded boy
to the other, and pausing only a single instant to throw back the
skirts of his tunic and grasp the butt of the revolver in his
hip-pocket, demanded in the voice of an Irish stentor:
"_What's-all-this? What's-all-this-now?_"
"Robbery!" P. Sybarite replied, mastering with difficulty a giggle of
hysterical relief. "Robbery and attempted murder! Arrest that man--Red
November--with the gun in his hand."
With an inarticulate roar, the patrolman swung on toward the
gangster--and P. Sybarite plucked the boy by the sleeve and drew him
quickly to the sidewalk.
By the never-to-be-forgotten grace of _Kismet_ his taxicab was
precisely where he had left it, the chauffeur on the seat.
"Quick!" he ordered the reeling boy--"into that cab unless you want to
be treated by a Bellevue sawbones--held as a witness besides. Are you
badly hurt?"
"Not badly," gasped the boy--"shot through the shoulder--can wait for
treatment--must keep out of the papers--"
"Right!" P. Sybarite jerked open the door, and his charge stumbled
into the cab. "Drive anywhere--like sin," he told the chauffeur--"tell
you where to stop when we get clear of this mess--"
Privately he blessed that man; for the cab was in motion almost before
he could swing clear of the sidewalk. He tumbled in upon the floor,
and picked himself up in time to close the door only when they were
swinging on two wheels round the corner of Seventh Avenue.
XV
SUCH STUFF AS PLOTS ARE MADE OF
"How is it?" P. Sybarite asked solicitously.
"Aches," replied the boy huddled in his corner of the cab.
Then he found spirit enough for a pale, thin smile, faintly visible in
a milky splash from an electric arc rocking by the vehicle in its
flight.
"Aches like hell," he added. "Makes one feel a bit sickish."
"Anything I can do?"
"No--thanks. I'll be all right--as soon as I find a surgeon to draw
that slug and plaster me up."
"That's the point: where am I to take you?"
"Home--the Monastery--Forty-third Street."
"Bachelor apartments?"
"Yes; I herd by my lonesome."
"Praises be!" muttered P. Sybarite, relieved.
For several minutes he had been entertaining a vision of himself
escorting this battered and bloody young person to a home of shrieking
feminine relations, and poignantly surmising the sort of welcome apt
to be accorded the good Samaritan in such instances.
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