"Come on there, now!"
And promptly the drivers of the two cars which had been at the heart of the snarl, like key logs in a jam, both heckled, both in the wrong and filled with unsaid things, trod harshly upon their accelerators. Wire-wheeled sedan and lemon-tinted limousine, up-town bound and cross-town bound, they leaped simultaneously forward, as Felicity stepped between.
Bystanders screamed so efficiently that their shrill tumult drowned the wail of overtaxed brakedrums. But that would have helped Felicity little. Nor could the brakes, for that matter. The lunging start had been too strong, the space too short to stop in.
Perry Blair, about whom those who screamed had heard something unpleasant—oh, yes, yellow!—lanced down the narrowing aisle between radiator and fenders. He struck Felicity like a vicious tackler yet did not go down, but leaped again. As the cars crunched together they slithered through the crowd, across the walk, against a wall, into a heap. And the fall hurt Perry a little, even accustomed as he was to the taking of blows yieldingly. He was slow to rise. The girl was quickly up.
"Last down!" she gasped, but her exclamation was somewhat pallid like her wit. "Hold 'em, Yale!"
Then, while she still faltered, uncertain, shaken, the occupant of the lemon-tinted limousine came swiftly to her. He was a great hulk of a man, yet light on his feet with that nimbleness which seems often astonishing in huge people.
"Let me put you in my car, Miss Brown," he begged, "and set you safely across. Not badly bruised, I trust?"
She gave him a flash of a glance and gasped again, but this time inaudibly. His ease with her name did not surprise her. He'd seen her often enough to know that. But this, she realized, was the first time that she had really been impressed upon him. Not too steadily, therefore, that she might need assistance, she let him help her back across the sidewalk, to the car, and thus away. Pig-iron Dunham? Of course. Knowing Felicity there is small cause to wonder that she went without even remembering to thank her rescuer.
He was getting up now, the target of few eyes. Most of those who lingered at all were staring after Dunham, Felicity and the lemon limousine. And Perry was congratulating himself, even while with an odd, detached expression he watched them go, that he had damaged but little his clothing, when a hand fell on his sleeve.
Perry turned to find a reporter, Hamilton by name, peering at him quizzically.