“Do I look bughouse?” answered Thomas. “Enough of the footback life for me. But will they have me again? The old lady is as fixed in her ways as a nut on a new axle.”
“My dear young man,” said the other, “she has been searching for you everywhere.”
“Great!” said Thomas. “I’m on the job. That team of dropsical dromedaries they call horses is a handicap for a first-class coachman like myself; but I’ll take the job back, sure, doc. They’re good people to be with.”
And now a change came o’er the suave countenance of the Caliph of Bagdad. He looked keenly and suspiciously at the ex-coachman.
“May I ask what your name is?” he said shortly.
“You’ve been looking for me,” said Thomas, “and don’t know my name? You’re a funny kind of sleuth. You must be one of the Central Office gumshoers. I’m Thomas McQuade, of course; and I’ve been chauffeur of the Van Smuythe elephant team for a year. They fired me a month ago for—well, doc, you saw what I did to your old owl. I went broke on booze, and when I saw the tire drop off your whiz wagon I was standing in that squad of hoboes at the Worth monument waiting for a free bed. Now, what’s the prize for the best answer to all this?”
To his intense surprise Thomas felt himself lifted by the collar and dragged, without a word of explanation, to the front door. This was opened, and he was kicked forcibly down the steps with one heavy, disillusionizing, humiliating impact of the stupendous Arabian’s shoe.
As soon as the ex-coachman had recovered his feet and his wits he hastened as fast as he could eastward toward Broadway.
“Crazy guy,” was his estimate of the mysterious automobilist. “Just wanted to have some fun kiddin’, I guess. He might have dug up a dollar, anyhow. Now I’ve got to hurry up and get back to that gang of bum bed hunters before they all get preached to sleep.”
When Thomas reached the end of his two-mile walk he found the ranks of the homeless reduced to a squad of perhaps eight or ten. He took the proper place of a newcomer at the left end of the rear rank. In a file in front of him was the young man who had spoken to him of hospitals and something of a wife and child.