"Hold fast!" yelled Pete, bending over. "That guy wants us, but he'll have to step some. No more traffic stops for mine!"
Just what they did after that Mary never knew. Nor was Pete himself particularly clear. They lurched, swayed, dodged; they scraped mudguards right and left; they shot behind, in front of, and around automobiles that were stupidly content to keep within the law; they scattered pedestrians; they ran past traffic semaphores that were set against them; they mocked cross-town trolleys by dashing across their paths; and all this to a constant din of shouting people and piercing police whistles.
The home of Miss Caroline Marshall stood on a corner, and the entrance to the garden and stable yard in the rear was on the side street. As Pete swerved from the avenue, Mary opened her eyes again and gasped incredulously. They were home!
He had leaped from the saddle, crossed the sidewalk, tried the tall, iron gate that barred the driveway and was back again before she could move her cramped body from the position into which she had twisted it.
"Gate's locked!" he cried. "We haven't any keys. Got to climb the wall. Hurry!"
Saying which, he seized her by an arm and dragged her out of the little bathtub. The brick wall that flanked the Marshall garden on the street side stood about seven feet in height. Pete reached for the top, chinned himself, and squirmed astride it.
"Gimme your hands!"
Mary lifted them, felt them seized, and found herself slowly rising from the sidewalk. For Bill Marshall she would have been a feather; for Pete Stearns she was a burden. He gritted his teeth and lifted until his muscles cracked. Inch by inch he raised her. Mary tried to dig her toes into the bricks, but they offered no foothold; all she accomplished was to tangle her feet in the lingerie. Two people across the street stopped to stare. Pete sighted them and gave another grim hoist.
Then victory. She was sitting on top of the wall, swinging her feet on the garden side, as he leaped down into a flower-bed and reached for her.
"Oh! The rose-bushes!" she cried, as he caught her and deposited her in the flower-bed.