"Miss Erith's car."
"Thanks," grunted Vaux, climbing into the pretty coupe and cuddling his shanks under a big mink robe, where, presently, he discovered a foot-warmer, and embraced it vigorously between his patent-leather shoes.
It had now become the coldest night on record in New York City.
Fortunately he didn't know that; he merely sat there and hated Fate.
Up the street and into Fifth Avenue glided the car and sped northward through the cold, silvery lustre of the arc-lights hanging like globes of moonlit ice from their frozen stalks of bronze.
The noble avenue was almost deserted; nobody cared to face such terrible cold. Few motors were abroad, few omnibuses, and scarcely a wayfarer. Every sound rang metallic in the black and bitter air; the windows of the coupe clouded from his breath; the panels creaked.
At the Plaza he peered fearfully out upon the deserted Circle, where the bronze lady of the fountain, who is supposed to represent Plenty, loomed high in the electric glow, with her magic basket piled high with icicles.
"Yes, plenty of ice," sneered Vaux. "I wish she'd bring us a hod or two of coal."
The wintry landscape of the Park discouraged him profoundly.
"A man's an ass to linger anywhere north of the equator," he grumbled. "Dickybirds have more sense." And again he thought of the wood fire in the club and the partly empty but steaming glass, and the aroma it had wafted toward him; and the temperature it must have imparted to "Bill."
He was immersed in arctic gloom when at length the car stopped. A butler admitted him to a brown-stone house, the steps of which had been thoughtfully strewn with furnace cinders.