Phil’s cab was getting the runaround.
“That friend of yours,” the driver growled. “He can’t seem to make up his mind. Where is he going - to the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street Station, or back to Grand Central?”
“Neither,” replied Phil. “He said he was going to the Pennsylvania Station.”
“He’s more likely to wind up at the Jersey Central Ferry,” the driver decided. “Unless” - Phil could see narrowed eyes in the front seat mirror - “unless maybe he doesn’t want you to tag along.”
Before Phil could answer that one, the cab ahead took an unexpected spurt. It was gone around the next curve like a whippet and if Phil’s driver hadn’t answered the challenge automatically, he would have been left far behind. As it was, the pickup of Phil’s cab was a trifle too late, or would have been, but for an added factor.
As they took the bend, Phil saw an odd thing ahead. The cab containing Ames was performing badly on an S-turn, as though its speed had thrown it out of the driver’s control. It looked as though it had careened clear from the road on to a slant of hard-baked open ground, only to come ricocheting back to the driveway.
The cab was completing its gyration when Phil spotted it and that would have ended the episode, but for the added factor. Whizzing up beside Phil’s cab and passing it came The Shadow’s speed-built job with Shrevvy at the wheel. The Shadow too wanted to see what was happening beyond the bend and in passing Phil’s cab, Shrevvy revealed an added item of the scene.
Shrevvy’s headlights slanted across the sun-baked terrace and momentarily picked out a ghost cab that practically evaporated under the glow!
Phil would have considered it an optical illusion produced by a peculiar reflection of Shrevvy’s headlamps. The Shadow, however, did not think in those terms, even though the sight was fleeting. He spoke an order to Shrevvy, who promptly cut across the path of Phil’s cab and hit the hardest soil.
Shrevvy calculated that swerve down to a matter of inches. If Phil’s driver had gauged as well, he would have kept straight ahead, clearing Shrevvy’s rear bumper cleanly. Only Phil’s driver didn’t see it that way, so he did the instinctive thing. Cutting his wheel he swerved hard, letting the cross-clipping cab drive him from the road, so that side by side the two vehicles went lurching over the hardened ground like a scene from an ancient chariot race.