Hurriedly consulting the taximeter, he stepped between the two, fished a bill from his pocket, and thrust it into the palm of the chauffeur before this last comprehended what was happening.
"None of that!" he enjoined, raising a peremptory voice to drown the snarl with which the man was tuning up to repay abuse and derision with the drippings of his own vocabulary. "You've got your fare, so clear out before this officer whom I see approaching hands you a summons for careless driving. D'you hear?—not another word!"
And as the chauffeur, cowed by this appearance of authority, shut a gaping mouth and stumbled to his seat, Lanyard turned to the woman and caught her arm in a firm grasp. "Come, Liane! compose yourself. I'll find you another cab."
The woman responded with a moment of stupefied silence during which her eyes incredulously rounded, then with a squeal of rapture—"Lanyarrrrd!"—and an impulsive offer to enfold him to that generous bosom, which only clever footwork foiled.
"Michael!" she cried in French—"my Michael! Of all men living the one whom I most have longed to find!"
"Observe that the lost is now found," he advised in the same language, smiling. "But be so amiable as not to keep me waiting here in the rain. Pull yourself together, Liane—your wrap as well, if you don't want to catch cold in your chest—in most of it, at least." In a more urgent voice he added: "Can you not understand your danger? Cover yourself, Liane—you are mad to expose such treasure on a public street at night!"
"What flattery!" the woman demurely responded. Nevertheless she did as he bade, clipping her cloak at the throat with one hand while the other slipped beneath his arm. "I am so overjoyed to find you again, my dear friend, I do not believe any evil could affect me. But come . . ."
She tugged him out of the grinning ring that had begun to form, and away from the kerb, where the grumbling chauffeur was settling into place behind his wheel, and where Lanyard had been preparing to beckon in the first vacant cab.
"But you want another taxi—"
"Not I, monsieur. It is but a step, where I am going. As for this rain, it is nothing"—she held out a hand—"already it has ceased. And surely I can count upon your gallantry . . ."