I had always had a ravenous appetite for excitement, and I had been in many a tight place; but for the first time there seemed to me to be an equilibrium between my internal energy and the outside situation. As I stepped from my street door and glanced about me, I had no feeling of danger. The whole situation seemed so simple. There stood the electric, just across the narrow stretch of sidewalk; there were the two hundred police, under Crawford's orders, scattered everywhere through the crowd, and good-naturedly jostling and pushing to create distraction. Without haste, I got into my machine. I calmly met the gaze of those thousands, quiet as so many barrels of gunpowder before the explosion. The chauffeur turned the machine.
“Go slow,” I called to him. “You might hurt somebody.”
But he had his orders from the inspector. He suddenly darted ahead at full speed. The mob scattered in every direction, and we were in Broadway, bound up town full-tilt, before I or the mob realized what he was about.
I called to him to slow down. He paid not the slightest attention. I leaned from the window and looked up at him. It was not my chauffeur; it was a man who had the unmistakable but indescribable marks of the plain-clothes policeman.
“Where are you going?” I shouted.
“You'll find out when we arrive,” he shouted back, grinning.
I settled myself and waited—what else was there to do? Soon I guessed we were headed for the pier off which my yacht was anchored. As we dashed on to it, I saw that it was filled with police, both in uniform and in plain clothes. I descended. A detective sergeant stepped up to me. “We are here to help you to your yacht,” he explained. “You wouldn't be safe anywhere in New York—no more would the place that harbored you.”
He had both common sense and force on his side. I got into the launch. Four detective sergeants accompanied me and went aboard with me. “Go ahead,” said one of them to my captain. He looked at me for orders.
“We are in the hands of our guests,” said I. “Let them have their way.”
We steamed down the bay and out to sea.