by little he began to believe in what had happened. For one thing the flivver made a most convincing racket. Yes, there could be no doubt of it! Here he was starting on the bottom rung of the ladder just as he had always told himself he wished to do. Well, time would show how far he could climb. Meanwhile there ought to be fun in it, rich fun! Many a dollar had Greg spent in his day on the prowling cabs of night! Here's where he would get some of it back. He knew the very air, the confidential, everything-goes-between-good-fellows air with which he must touch his cap and say: "Cab, sir?"
The old flivver rattled and bumped companionably across town. Greg was making for the White Light district, of course, where fares were to be picked up after midnight. At Madison Square he turned north on the Avenue. With its disappearing perspective of twin lights in a double row reflected from the wet pavement it was like a Venetian canal at carnival time, but the old taxi was a noisy gondola.
Greg had gone no farther than Twenty-sixth Street when he was hailed from the sidewalk by two men in evening dress, who had come perhaps from the club down the street. Greg pulled up beside the curb and leaned out to open the door as he had always seen the chauffeurs do.
"Where to, sir?"
"The Chronos Club."
One of the men made to get in and staggered back with a queer throaty gasp: "Good God, what's this!"
Greg hastily slipped out of his seat. "What's the matter?"
"A dead body!" the man gasped, and instinctively looked around for a policeman.
On the floor of the cab before them lay a bulky body queerly huddled on top of an old valise. When the door had been opened the feet pushed out uncompromisingly. The light of a street lamp fell full on the upturned, yellow, dreadfully quiet face.
Greg's mind after an instant's stand of horror worked like lightning. He shut the door pushing the feet in with it.
"Oh, he's only soused," he said carelessly. "I didn't know his friend had left him behind. I'll have to take him to the station house now."
Springing back into the driver's seat he opened her up wide. The two men looked after him with an uncertain air. The taxi leaped ahead. He turned the next corner on two wheels, and the next and the next after that. His blood was pounding in his ears. Finally in the middle of a quiet block he ventured to draw up and listen. No sound of a raised alarm reached him.
CHAPTER II
GREG'S FIRST FARE
Greg had come to a stop beside a gas lamp in a long block of little houses. Not a soul was in sight, and no window showed a light. Slipping out of his seat he opened the door to have a better look at his gruesome freight. Perhaps after all he had been mistaken. When the door was opened the feet impatiently pushed out again. There was something piteously human in the aspect of these turned-up toes in common-sense shoes with soft kid uppers comfortable for old feet. There was no doubt that the man was dead; the slack, huddled attitude, the awful serenity of his expression proclaimed it. Greg ventured to touch his hand; it was death cold.
It was the body of a man of middle age, plump rather than corpulent. He was well-dressed in a somewhat old-fashioned style, the open overcoat revealing a cutaway beneath, while a silk hat not new, lay on the seat of the cab where it had fallen. A gold watch chain still stretched across his waistcoat, and the little finger of the hand Greg touched displayed a handsome ring. So he had not been robbed. This ring bore a curious red stone cut in octagonal form. The clean-shaven face had a notably benignant look—this had been a kind old gentleman in life; he was very dark and had a slightly foreign look, a Spanish-American, Greg guessed. There was nothing to show how he had come by his death. The bag under his body was an old-fashioned suit-case with a collapsible side.
Meanwhile the question was hammering on Greg's brain: "What am I to do? What am I to do?" His obvious duty of course was to take the body to the nearest police station, but he shivered at the prospect of what would assuredly follow, the searching questions, the pitiless publicity. He could not hope to conceal his identity, for as yet the cabman Elmer Fishback had no background. And then to have his family and friends read next morning how Gregory Parr had become the driver on an owl taxi and was implicated in a murder—well, anything rather than that!
Why not dump the body out where he was, and let things take their course? The crime was none of his. But suppose, just as he started to drag it out of the cab, some one turned into the street, or came out of one of the houses? Or suppose, as was not unlikely, that the crime was already known, and the police even now were in search of a cab bearing his number? In that case to cast the body adrift would be to incriminate himself. For a moment or two Greg was inclined to abandon the whole outfit where it stood, but it now represented all he possessed in the world, and his native obstinacy would not permit of a surrender so abject. After all, he had done nothing wrong; he determined to see the thing through.
A hot tide of anger surged up in him against the man who had fooled him. What made it more bitter was the fact that he had liked the garrulous little cabman and had taken his word, only to be betrayed. How easily he had been deceived—fool that he was! But if he could get hold of him——! Well, even now it was only half-past twelve, and if the man really intended to sail on the Savoia there was time——! At this point in his reflections Greg shut the door again, and sliding back into the driver's seat turned his car and hastened back across town.
His state of mind was very different from that in which he had so blithely set forth, for now he carried a burden of horror behind. The picture of that poor form of human clay seemed etched on his brain, and he could not forget it for an instant. He was frankly terrified too; the hardest thing in the world to get rid of is a dead body that you cannot account for. He conceived the idea of driving out in the country and abandoning it in a lonely road. In that case he would have to have gasoline. Suppose while his tank was filling, some one glanced inside. Perhaps he ought to stop and set the body up on the seat and put its hat on its head—but what was the use? At the first jolt it would fall over again. When Greg passed a policeman he instinctively slumped down in his seat, and his heart stood still for a moment as he awaited the expected peremptory hail. But he was allowed to pass.
Back outside the Brevard Line pier, Greg stopped, at a loss what to do with his cab. He could not bring himself to drive out on the busy, lighted pier again; that they had escaped discovery the first time seemed miraculous now. He finally decided to leave it outside in a spot a little apart from the procession passing in and out. If anybody happened to look in while he was gone, well, so be it! The matter would be decided for him.
It is scarcely necessary to state that Mr. Gregory Parr, alias Hickey Meech, was not aboard the Savoia. As Greg looked for him voices were already warning all but intending passengers ashore. "Mr. Parr," Greg was informed, had not paid the balance of his passage money, and his reservation was therefore canceled. He was not in the stateroom that had been allotted him. His baggage still lay unclaimed on the pier.
"Safely hidden by now!" Greg said to himself bitterly, "leaving me to dispose of the issue of his crime! He knows of course that I dare not report the matter to the police! What a downy bird I have been!"
With a long earth-shaking rumble of her whistle the Savoia began to back out of her slip, while Greg made his way heavily back towards the spot where he had left his cab. He took a survey of it from a little distance, prepared for instant flight if necessary, but there was no one near it. He approached it gingerly, cranked his engine, and drove away, his
