Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/270

 NEVER could remember much about that ride of mine with Wendy Washburn through the rain, I don't know just where we were when he hailed a passing taxicab, and I don't know just where that taxicab took us.

But I do remember that the damp upholstery of the taxi was very smelly, and that the door-windows rattled, and that the wheel chains kept slapping against the fenders with a sort of tick-tock rhythm that made my eyelids droop. I also seem to remember Wendy Washburn passed the driver a twenty-dollar bill, if I'm not mistaken, which the man in the wet waterproof coolly and casually accepted.

I think we must have had the city pretty much to ourselves during the midnight drive through one deserted street after another, for, by the way we skidded about corners and pounded over car-tracks, I knew we were traveling a little faster than the law allows. But my bag of sensation had been shaken out. I no longer reacted to what was taking place around me. I don't think an eighteen-inch gun