“Is that Wickey?” cried Mr. Donalds.
“No, sir,” answered his especial driver. “‘Nother fellow.”
“Ask him to go somewhere and buy me half a dozen cigars,” said Mr. Donalds. “Tell him to get Havana perfectos.”
This was soon done, and as he began to smoke, Mr. Donalds felt calmer; but a new and more serious craving now assailed him. He was in the habit of lunching promptly at one o’clock, and it was now half past one. The cab was hot with the sun blazing down upon it, and this, combined with the bad effects of boiling rage, sizzling impatience, and fast growing hunger, were impairing Mr. Donalds’s health. He felt positively ill. He threw away his third cigar half finished.
The driver approached the window.
“I’m going to get a bite to eat, sir,” he said. “This here fellow knows Wickey. He’ll stay till I get back.”
“Just a minute!” said Mr. Donalds. “I—er—”
This was intensely distasteful to him, but he knew that without food he could not be at his best.
“Bring me back something to eat,” he said; “something—er—small and not conspicuous, if possible.”
Thus it was that Mr. Donalds, eminent business man and mirror of respectability, might have been seen eating a “hot dog” in a taxicab on Fifth Avenue on a Sunday afternoon. He had pulled down the blinds, had taken the first bite, and was discovering that he had never tasted anything so exquisite, so zestful—when the door was opened and a policeman looked in.