“A lovely city. I was last there in 1926.”
“Sure, it would be a great town if there weren’t so many of our folk there — it was like Coney Island on a Sunday!”
“You were there when? November, I suppose?”
“That’s so. The American people treat Havana like Europe does Monte Carlo. Every little hick from the middle-west has to go to that place once, or he cuts no social ice in his home town at all. The bars are open night and day, and drinks about a tenth of the price they’d pay in a speakeasy back home, which isn’t calculated to make ’em behave as tho’ they were at the King’s garden party. I should have cleared out on the next boat if it hadn’t been for a Dago with a Ford!”
Simon smiled. “You don’t look as if you’d been run over!”
“Oh, it wasn’t this child,” Van Ryn laughed. “I was in my own automobile behind; I toured the Sports Bentley to South America with me. Anyhow, I was taking a spin out to the tennis-courts at the Jockey Club the second afternoon I was there, and just outside the town there was only this bird in the flivver in front of me. I was waiting to pass, when he swerves to avoid an oncoming car, and in swerving he knocked down a poor old man. Did he stop? Did he hell! He gave one look, saw the old bird lying in the ditch, and put his foot on the gas!”
“Brute,” Simon murmured.
“Brute’s the word,” Rex nodded. “Well, I don’t stand for that sort of thing, and I’ll not say Ford isn’t a big man, but he hasn’t turned out a car yet that can give the dust to a Bentley. I was after that guy as though I’d been a speed cop looking for promotion. In half a mile he’d got to take the sidewalk and the nearest light standard, or stop and have a word with me. He stopped all right, and started to jabber in Spanish or some lingo, but that cut no ice with me at all! I just happen to have been born a foot too tall for most people to try any monkeying, so I didn’t have much trouble with this little rat. When we got back they were picking up the old man.”
“Was he badly hurt?” the Duke inquired.
“Nothing serious; more shock and bruises than broken bones, but he was considerable upset, so we propped him up in the Bentley and I ran him down to the hospital. The Mexico negro — or whatever he was — I passed over to a real speed cop, who could speak his rotten tongue.”