"I've got a scheme!" Kirkwood declared so explosively that she caught her breath with the surprise of it. "There's the Pless; they know me there, and my credit's good. When we shake them off, we can have the cabby take us to the hotel. I'll register and borrow from the management enough to pay our way to Chiltern and the tolls for a cable to New York. I've a friend or two over home who wouldn't let me want for a few miserable pounds.... So you see," he explained boyishly, "we're at the end of our troubles already!"
She said something inaudible, holding her face averted. He bent nearer to her, wondering. "I didn't understand," he suggested.
Still looking from him, "I said you were very good to me," she said in a quavering whisper.
"Dorothy!" Without his knowledge or intention before the fact, as instinctively as he made use of her given name, intimately, his strong fingers dropped and closed upon the little hand that lay beside him. "What is the matter, dear?" He leaned still farther forward to peer into her face, till glance met glance in the ending and his racing pulses tightened with sheer delight of the humid happiness in her glistening eyes. "Dorothy, child, don't worry so. No harm shall come to you. It's all working out—all working out right. Only have a little faith in me, and I'll make everything work out right, Dorothy."
Gently she freed her fingers. "I wasn't," she told him in a voice that quivered between laughter and tears, "I wasn't worrying. I was ... You wouldn't understand. Don't be afraid I shall break down or—or anything."
"I shan't," he reassured her; "I know you're not that sort. Besides, you'd have no excuse. We're moving along famously. That cabby knows his business."
In fact that gentleman was minute by minute demonstrating his peculiar fitness for the task he had so cheerfully undertaken. The superior horsemanship of the London hackney cabman needs no exploitation, and he in whose hands rested the fate of the Calendar treasure was peer of his compeers. He was instant to advantage himself of every opening to forward his pliant craft, quick to foresee the fortunes of the way and govern himself accordingly.
Estimating with practised eye the precise moment when the police supervisor of traffic at the junction of Parliament and Bridge Streets, would see fit to declare a temporary blockade, he so managed that his was the last vehicle to pass ere the official wand, to ignore which involves a forfeited license, was lifted; and indeed, so close was his calculation that he escaped only with a scowl and word of warning from the bobby. A matter of no importance whatever, since his end was gained and the pursuing cab had been shut off by the blockade.
In Calendar's driver, however, he had an adversary of abilities by no means to be despised. Precisely how the man contrived it, is a question; that he made a detour by way of Derby Street is not improbable, unpleasant as it may have been for Stryker and Calendar to find themselves in such close proximity to "the Yard." At all events, he evaded the block, and hardly had the chase swung across Bridge Street, than the pursuer was nimbly clattering in its wake.
Past the Houses of Parliament, through Old Palace Yard, with the Abbey on their left, they swung away into Abingdon Street, whence suddenly they dived into the maze of backways, great and mean, which lies to the south of Victoria. Doubling and twisting, now this way, now that, the driver tooled them through the intricate heart of this labyrinth, leading the pursuers a dance that Kirkwood thought calculated to dishearten and shake off the pursuit in the first five minutes. Yet always, peering back through the little peephole, he saw Calendar's cab pelting doggedly in their rear—a hundred yards behind, no more, no less, hanging on with indomitable grit and determination.