What happened was that a sinewy hand, appearing out of the crush, gripped his arm. Under a squashed felt hat appeared the green
eyes of Cy Norton. "Come on!" said Cy.
"Well, lord love a duck!" thundered H.M., above the racket and din. "Son, I didn't even know you were here!"
"Within ten minutes," said Cy, "I can tell you where you’ll be. You'll be in the can, sir; and you'll stay for thirty days."
"I've got a travelling bag back there," protested the injured one, who was being hauled forwards. "I got a very valuable cap, too."
"We can get them later. Forward towards the arcade!"
And the double battering-ram, both heads down, plunged for the arcade.
When they emerged into it, another crowd - mere spectators—fortunately had assembled. It was easy to mingle innocently with it. But Cy, when he saw two more policemen hurrying towards the centre of riot, thought it best to drag H.M. into an adjacent drugstore with a convenient exit.
It was peaceful in the drugstore, despite a crowded soda fountain. Cy, restraining a natural sympathy, quieted the great man.
"Listen!" he urged. "Your valuable papers: passport, letter of credit, the rest of it—have you got them on you?"
H.M. significantly tapped his breast pocket
"Good! Then there's only the question of your suitcase. Do you know anybody who's influential in this town?"
H.M. reflected.
"I know the District Attorney, son. Bloke by the name of Gilbert Byles. He wrote me a letter before I left home. It began, d'ye see, with: 'How are you, you old s.o.b.?' So I knew, American style, it was friendly."
Cy Norton uttered a sigh of relief.
"Then you'll probably get out of this business," he said, "without any trouble. Ill just have to risk coming back and getting your suitcase later. In the meantime, before they send out a police alarm, I've got to get you to Maralarch instead of Washington. I've..."
Abruptly Cy stopped.
Facing them from a little distance ahead, with a hesitant look, was a slender girl in a sleeveless white silk frock. Her face wore a faint golden tan which heightened the intensity of her blue eyes and partly open mouth. Her hair, a natural gold and worn in a long page-boy, gleamed under lights and humming fans.
For a second Cy Norton was more than taken aback. He was shocked to the heart at her resemblance to... And here Cy shut up the thought in his mind. It wasn't a close resemblance. But it was there.
The girl, for her part, was looking at H.M. after the fashion of one who considers a carefully memorized description.
"I—I beg your pardon." She took a step forward. "Are you by any chance Sir Henry Merrivale?"
H.M. coughed and gave her a modest bow.
"Burn me, but you're a nice-lookin' wench!" he said in frank admiration. The girl, though she did not move, seemed to reel. "This country," added H.M., "Is full of nice-lookin' wenches, though half of 'em are so spoiled they ought to be walloped. You oughtn't to be walloped."
The girl seemed to restrain a wild desire to laugh in his face.
"Thanks awfully," she murmured. "I’m Jean Manning. My father sent me here to look for you, because Mr. Davis had to go back to his office." Her eyes grew concerned. "For some mysterious reason, he seemed to think you'd be in trouble. Are you in trouble? I've got a car here."
"You've got a car?" demanded Cy.
"Yes!"
"Where is it? I mean, can we get at it quickly?"
"I know a good deal about this station," said Jean in a curious tone. Then her tone changed at the urgency of Cy's manner. "For one thing, I know a passage off the mezzanine that'll take us out of here as far as Forty-sixth Street and Park Avenue."
"Then we'd better get started for Maralarch, Miss Manning. I'm sorry, but it's serious. If they send out a police alarm..."
"Police alarm?" cried Jean.
"Yes... Oh, no, you don't!" said Cy, seizing H.M.'s coattail just as the latter, his eyes fixed greedily on the soda fountain, was about to get away. "I’ll deliver you out there if it kills me. And you'll answer some questions on the way!"
"Oh, my son!" groaned H.M. "We're safe now. There's no possibility..."
Then, as though warned by telepathic instinct, his big bald head swung round.
Through the glass door of the drugstore, mouthing like an avatar of vengeance, peered the face of Officer O'Casey.
"Out the other entrance," shouted Cy Norton. "Run!"
3
H.M. answered no questions until the big yellow car, having maneuvered cross-town, was racing along the West Side Highway past the Hudson.
Jean, a red scarf round her head, was at the wheel. H.M., his arms folded and a mulish expression on his face, was squeezed in between Jean and Cy Norton on the outside. Cy made one trial effort
"Now look here, H.M. About your going on the razzle-dazzle this afternoon..."
"I'm bein' kidnapped," said H.M., staring malignantly at the windshield. "I got to visit a family in Washington."
The top of the car was down. Though the heat had lessened, its stickiness remained despite a cool breeze. On their left the expanse of the river was dark blue, stung with light points. On their right, far above, the apartment houses of Riverside Drive showed grey as Italian villas against green.
Cy, not a little uneasy, did not speak again until they reached the George Washington Bridge and raced on past.
"There's been no police alarm," he said. "Nobody there as much as glanced inside the car."
"I know!" nodded Jean. "But every minute I've been watching the rear-view mirror, and expecting to hear sirens behind us. And all because of "
"Now, H.M.!"
"Oh, for the love of Esau!"
"You're not being kidnapped," Cy declared violently, "because you never wanted to go to Washington at all."
"I dunno what you're talkin' about."
"And I'll prove it," persisted Cy, "on the basis of your own conduct. Now you knew perfectly damned well how that shuttle worked. Didn't you?"
"Well... now," muttered the great man uncomfortably.
"Somewhere, probably aboard a ship, you learned the trick of how to walk through a turnstile without paying your fare." Cy swallowed hard. Curiosity seared him as it had seared Officer O'Casey. "How did you do it, by the way?"
"Aha!" said H.M. The ghost of an evil glee stole across his face; then again he became the Iron Man.
"That trick's a beauty," he added as a teaser. "Maybe I'll explain how it works, and maybe I won't. But it's a beauty."
Cy restrained his wrath.
"So you couldn't wait," he pointed out, "to try the trick on somebody. You hared off to Grand Central, and sat on your bag like..."
"Like a spider," supplied Jean.
'That's it! You waited like a spider for some likely victim, and along came that motorcycle cop. It was all serene at first But he said Winston Churchill was an American, so you got mad and decided you'd really give him the business. Isn't that correct?"
"By the way," thundered H .M., "did I introduce you two to each other?"
"As a matter of fact you didn't," smiled Jean, with a sidelong glance.
"Think of that, now!" said H.M., as though by mere power of voice he could divert questions about other matters. "Well, this here is Jean Manning, the daughter of an old friend of mine. This feller here," he tapped the opposite shoulder, "is Cy Norton, who's been London correspondent of the New York Echo for eighteen years. There, now!"
"How do you do?" said Jean gravely. And, to tell the truth, it did momentarily divert Cy.
All the time he had been conscious of Jean, too conscious of her, because of that resemblance to someone else. Jean was younger, of course, and less sophisticated. But the memory of other years...