But Jim recoiled. "Me? No. I'll stay and help Lilas make her get-away."
Merkle nodded agreement. "Don't let her get out of your sight, either, understand? There's a ship sailing in the morning. See that she's aboard."
Jarvis Hammon spoke. "I want you all to know that I'm entirely to blame and that I did this myself. Lilas is a—good girl." The words came laboriously, but his heavy brows were drawn down, his jaw was square. "I was clumsy. I might have killed her. But she's all right, and I'll be all right, too, when I get a doctor. Now put that pistol in my pocket, John. Do as I say. There! Now I'm ready."
The hall-man of the Elegancia was somewhat amused at sight of the three figures that emerged from Miss Lynn's apartment, and surmised that there had been a gay time within, judging from the condition of the old man in the center. Theatrical people were a giddy lot, anyhow. Since there was no likelihood of a tip from one so deeply in his cups, the attendant did not trouble to lend a hand, but raised his heels to the switchboard and dozed off again.
Bob Wharton mounted the box and drove eastward across Broadway, through the gloomy block to Columbus Avenue and on to Central Park West, the clop-clop-clop of the horse's feet echoing lonesomely in the empty street. At Sixty-seventh Street he wheeled into the sunken causeway that links the East and West sides.
Once in the shadows, Merkle leaned from the door, crying softly,
"Faster! Faster!"
Bob whipped up, the horse cantered, the cab reeled and bounced over the cobblestones, rocking the wounded man pitifully.
To John Merkle the ride was terrible, with a drunkard at the reins and in his own arms a perhaps fatally injured man, who, despite the tortures of that bumping carriage, interspersed his groans with cries of "Hurry, Hurry!" But, while Merkle was appalled at the situation and its possible consequences, he felt, nevertheless, that Hammon had acted in quite the proper way. In fact, for a manly man there had been no alternative, regardless of who had fired the shot. It was quite like Jarvis to do the generous, even the heroic, thing when least expected. Whatever Hammon might have been, he was in the last analysis all man, and Merkle admired his courage. He was glad that Hammon had thought of those three women who bore his name, even if they bore him no love, and he took courage from his friend's plucky self-control. Perhaps the wound was not serious, after all. Hammon's death would mean the ruin of many investors, a general crash, perhaps even a wide-spread panic, and, according to Merkle's standards, these catastrophes bulked bigger than the unhappiness of women, the fall of an honored name, or death itself.
When he felt the grateful smoothness of Fifth Avenue beneath the wheels he leaned forth a second time and warned Bob, "Be careful of the watchman in the block."
The liquor in Bob was dying; he bent downward to inquire, "Is he all right?"