I summoned my friendly young waiter, and asked him to bring in a taxi driver. In less than a minute a burly fellow stood before me, cap in hand. Through the waiter I asked him how much he wanted to drive a party that night to Elsinore. He shook his head, and, according to the waiter, replied that he could not risk the journey, as he might be heavily fined.
“How much, including the fine?” I asked.
If he had demanded fifty pounds, I should have paid it—with Daily Chronicle money.
To my amazement, he asked the modest sum of five pounds, including the fine.
I turned to Mrs. Rasmussen, Peter Freuchen, and the other lady, and invited them all to make the journey in “my” motor car.
They hesitated, laughed, whispered to each other, and were, as I could see, tempted by the lure of the adventure.
“But,” said Mrs. Rasmussen, “when we get there, supposing you were not allowed on the launch by the Director of the Danish-Greenland Company? He is our friend. But you are, after all, a stranger!”
“I should have had an amusing drive,” I said. “It would be worth while. Perhaps you would tell me what Doctor Cook says, when you return.”
They laughed again, hesitated quite a time, then accepted the invitation. It was arranged that we should start at ten o’clock, when few people would be abroad outside the city, where we should have to travel with lights out to avoid the police. There still remained an hour or so. We had dinner, talked of Doctor Cook, and at ten o’clock started out in the taxi, and I thought how incredible it was that I should be sitting there, opposite a beautiful lady with a silver fox round her throat, with a laughing girl by her side, and a young Danish explorer next to the driver, riding through Denmark with lights out, to meet a man who had discovered the North Pole, and whose name I had never heard two days before. These things happen only in journalism and romance.