"Run!" cried Hickey. "She can run like Duffy in the quarter mile! Before we go out let me show you my papers is all right." He exhibited cards for his car license and operator's license.
"You said your name was Meech," objected Greg. "These are made out to Elmer Fishback."
"Oh, a coupla fellas owned the boat since Fishback," said Hickey. "The cards always goes with the car. You'll have to be Fishback when the inspector comes round. Here's my receipts for the payments."
These were signed by one Bessie Bickle.
"She financed the deal," explained Hickey. "She keeps a little yard over on the East side, and I rent space from her. You might do worse than keep on with her. Bessie's on the level. It's Gibbon Street south of Houston. Jumping-off place on the East side. Better put it down."
"Gibbon Street; I'll remember it by the Decline and Fall," said Greg.
Paying their shot they went out by the front door. The taxi rested easily by the curb, like an old horse asleep. She had a slight list to starboard—"From the bloated rich climbing aboard that side," explained Hickey. Her absurd little engine hood was like a nose without character, and the smoky lamps at either side like bleary eyes. To complete the likeness to a head, the top projected over the windshield like the visor of a cap. Greg was strongly reminded of the human derelict inside the bar and his face fell. Romance receded into the background.
Hickey watching him close made haste to remove the bad impression. "Hell! Nobody expects looks in a flivver. Wait till you feel her move under you! She's a landaulet, see? The top lets down in fine weather. Take the wheel! Take the wheel! I'll crank her."
Greg remembered afterward that during this preliminary inspection, Hickey stood squarely in front of the door of the cab, thus blocking any view of the interior. But it never occurred to him to look inside. He took the driver's seat, and Hickey cranked her. They started.
They had not gone a hundred feet before Greg discovered, though Hickey kept up a running fire of praise to drown the myriad voices of the flivver, that her piston rings were worn and her transmission loose. She was indeed well suppled, a little too supple in fact. There were other rattles, squeaks and knocks that he could not at the moment locate. Nevertheless she ran; she ran indeed with the noisy enthusiasm characteristic of her kind. There is no false delicacy about a flivver. Greg never hesitated. He was a natural born mechanic, and the engine of a flivver held no terrors for him.