"Pas de quoi, mademoiselle," he responded gruffly, and her opinion of the French rose several points.
The chauffeur, a septuagenarian who smelled of wine, had a bulbous nose and was so deaf that it took her several seconds to make him understand where she wanted to go. When finally he grasped the address, he tapped his most conspicuous feature with a horny finger, and, his engine having by this time stopped, descended with creaks and groans to crank it up. He was so long over the operation that she began to be alarmed. However, he was not drunk, only senile. Of the two, his taxi was far worse—rickety, spavined, with every evidence of decrepitude. It started with a jerk which threw its occupant off her seat.
"At any rate I'm moving," she told herself with real relief. "I'm getting there at last. That's something."
Any sort of motion might be better than none, yet when she realised the pace at which she must crawl she suffered strong misgivings. To jog along like this when speed was a prime essential! Moreover they did not always jog, frequently they stopped dead still, while the ancient driver fumbled with the gear and eventually hit upon something which sent them forward again with a fresh spasm. It was so completely maddening that after the fifth attack she could bear it no longer. Thrusting her head out of the window she shouted shrilly:
"Vite! Vite! Je suis très pressé! Vite!"
She regretted her lack of expletives, but she need not have done so. The sole result, amid mumblings and grumblings, was an abortive spurt which ended in a breakdown more disastrous than any preceding. Minutes were lost while the septuagenarian got down for another cranking up, and then in the old fashion they chugged on again. At this rate it would take them more than half an hour to reach the villa, during which time anything might happen—would happen, in all probability. Still, she resolved not to risk another exhortation to speed, but to trust to luck to send another taxi in her way. She had no money to pay for this one if she abandoned it, but she reflected that she could give the old man her wrist-watch. It was a problem which need not have concerned her. Many taxis whizzed by, but not one was disengaged.
When they mounted the steeper part of the incline the unhappy engine so laboured that each revolution of the wheels threatened to be the last. Still they moved onward with a sort of grim persistence, and it occurred to Esther that if she did not go altogether mad in the interval there might just possibly be a glimmer of hope. They had passed many familiar landmarks; in a sort of fashion they were getting there. She sat on the edge of the lumpy seat, alternately praying and gibbering, her hands clenched, her head throbbing with the sharp pain born of fear.
"Oh, God," she murmured for the twentieth time, "don't let it happen, make him wait till I get there! Oh, God——"
The taxi slowed down with an ominous finality. Again the driver climbed down, fiddled about for several seconds, then with immense deliberation approached and opened the door. "What's the matter? Can't you get on? Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?" she cried, ready to shake him.
He shrugged his shoulders and blew his red nose on a huge filthy handkerchief. Then with an air of great philosophy he replied: