Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/123



precisely nine o'clock a tall and benignant looking figure, made more stately by the loose folds of a black raincoat, stepped from a door in Fifty-first Street, not a hundred yards from Fifth Avenue, and peered carefully eastward and then as carefully westward. On his head he wore a broad-brimmed black hat and in his right hand he carried a black club bag.

He stepped quickly down to the street, where a taxi-cab stood waiting. He crossed to the curb, stooping against the heavy slant of rain that swept down from the east. The taxi-driver, huddled back out of the drip from his cab-hood, nodded a head half-buried in a water-proof helmet, blithely said "Yep" to a second question from the new-comer, and speeded up his engine.

The man with the club bag again looked up and down the street, directed the driver to hurry him to Dirlam's Casino by way of Fifty-ninth Street and Broadway, and then stepped into the cab and slammed the door after him.

It was an inclement night for an excursion in even a closed carriage. The cross-street stood as empty as a drained flume-way, the pooled asphalt throwing up scattered reflections of the lonely city lamps. The floor of Fifth Avenue, washed as clean as a ballroom and shimmering like a mirror, undulated mistily