"Only ninety horse," says Langdon, jerkin' us around a Broadway car so fast that we grazed both ends at once.
"You needn't hit 'er up on my account," says I, as we scoots across the Plaza, makin' a cab horse stand on his hind legs to give us room.
"I'm only on the second speed," says he. "Wait," and he does some monkeyin' with the lever.
Maybe it was Central Park; but it seemed to me like bein' shot through a Christmas wreath, and the next thing I knows we're tearin' up Amsterdam-ave. Say, I can see 'em yet, them folks and waggons and things we missed—women holdin' kids by the hand, old ladies steppin' out of cars, little girls runnin' across the street with their arms full of bundles, white wings with their dust cans, and boys with delivery carts. Sometimes I'd just shut my eyes and listen for the squashy sound, and when it didn't come I'd open 'em and figure on what would happen if I should reach out and get Langdon's neck in the crook of my arm.
And it wa'n't my first fast ride in town, either. But I'd never been behind the lamps when a two-ton machine was bein' sent at a fifty-mile clip up a street crowded with folks that had almost as much right to be livin' as we did.
It was a game that suited Langdon all right, though. He's squattin' behind the wheel bareheaded, with his ketchup tinted hair plastered back by the wind, them purple eyes shut to a squint, his under jaw stuck out, and a kind of half grin—if you could call it that—flickerin' on and off his thick lips. I don't wonder men shook their fists at us and women turned white and sick as we cleared 'em by the thickness of a sheet of paper. I expect we left a string of cuss words three blocks long.
I don't know how far we went, or where. It was all a nightmare to me, just a string of gasps and visions of what would be in the papers next day, after the coroner's jury got busy. But somehow we got through without any red on the tires, and pulls up in front of the Studio. I didn't jump out in a hurry, like I wanted to. I needed a minute to think, for it seemed to me something was due some one.
"Nice little plaything you've got here," says I. "And that was a great ride. But sittin' still so long has kind of cramped my legs. Don't feel like limberin' up a bit with the mitts, do you?"
"I'd just as soon," says Langdon.
I was tryin' not to look the way I felt; but when we'd sent Swifty down to sit in the machine, and I'd got Langdon peeled off and standin' on the mat, with the spring lock snapped between him and the outside door, it seemed too good to be true. I'd picked out an old set of gloves that had the hair worked away from the knuckles some, for I wa'n't plannin' on any push ball picnic this time.