THE LID OFF
An Alliance, Offensive, Defensive, and Back-Fensive
Smith, petrified, looked blankly at the paw.
For a while he remained stupidly incapable of speech or movement, then, as though arousing from a bad dream:
"What are you going to do, anyway?" he asked with an effort. "This car is bound to stop sometime, I suppose, and--and then what?"
"I don't know what I'm going to do. Whatever I do will be the thing that ought to happen to me, to that cat and to that girl--that is the thing which is destined to happen. That's all I know about it."
His friend passed an unsteady hand across his brow.
"This whole proceeding is becoming a nightmare," he said unsteadily. "Am I awake? Is this Forty-second Street? Hold up some fingers, Brown, and let me guess how many you hold up, and if I guess wrong I'm home in bed asleep and the whole thing is off."
Beekman Brown patted his friend on the shoulder.
"You take a cab, Smithy, and go somewhere. And if I don't come go on alone to the Carringtons'.... You don't mind going on and fixing things up with the Carringtons, do you?"