“Stop, confound you!” yelled the old gentleman, waving his umbrella. “Stop, you blackguard! Don’t you hear—”
This time the taxi-driver replied with a gesture quite unmistakable, and disappeared from sight round the corner.
The old gentleman turned apologetically to his Ariadne.
“Intolerable! Monstrous!” he announced. “If you will allow me, madam, I will stay and secure the next taxi for you, or give the man in charge.”
“Boys,” murmured the dreamy voice of that bonny fighter, Ed Gillette, “I guess we’ll stay an’ see this through. We’re nootral, of course, but maybe we can hand the taxi-driver a Note!”
Without further pressure our four friends anchored in a favourable position on the opposite side of the sunny street, and awaited developments. One or two vehicles sped through, but they were either military automobiles or taxis carrying passengers. Once or twice a tradesman’s delivery-van passed by, rendered top-heavy in appearance by a bloated gas-bag billowing upon the roof. But nothing else.
“’Nother dead town!” murmured Joe McCarthy, not without satisfaction.
As he spoke, another taxi, with flag up, swung round the corner. The old gentleman, taking up a frontal position in the middle of the street, waved his umbrella. The taxi, with a swerve that would have done credit to a destroyer avoiding a mine, eluded him, and resumed its normal course. This manœuvre accomplished, it slackened speed again.
But the British are a tenacious race. The elderly champion of the fair turned and ran with surprising swiftness after the receding vehicle. He overtook it. He took a flying leap upon the footboard beside the driver, and grasping that astonished malefactor by the collar with one hand laid hold of the side brake with the other. Employing the driver’s neck as fulcrum, he pulled the lever with all his strength and jammed the brakes on hard. His baffled victim having automatically thrown open the throttle of the engine, the whirring back wheels, caught in the full embrace of the brake, skidded violently; the cab described a semicircle, and ran to a full stop on the sidewalk with its radiator (which had narrowly missed Joe McCarthy) pressed affectionately against some one’s area railings.