The Strange Adventures of Mr. John Smith in Paris/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
HELTERSKELTER came a taxicab out of the “Rue de Rivoli into the Place de la Concorde. It swished to the right around the obelisk and stopped abruptly. Mr. John Smith stood forward from the shadows. A woman, heavily veiled, thrust her head out of the open window of the cab.
“Quick, quick!” she exclaimed. “I am being followed!”
Mr. Smith knew the voice perfectly. The haste in the command quickened his sturdy legs, and he flung open the door of the vehicle just as another cab came whizzing round the corner. Mr. Smith glanced back once, dropped down into the seat beside the veiled woman, and banged the door.
“All right, son,” he called to the chauffeur. “Hit it up!”
The driver evidently understood; for there was the clatter of a gear, hastily enmeshed, and the taxi began to move. Immediately behind them the other taxi was coughing as it slowed up. The woman’s hand, chilled with terror, met Mr. Smith’s in the darkness and clung. An odd thrill shot up Mr. Smith’s spinal column and he laughed nervously.
“I guess that was going some!” he remarked triumphantly. Then, “Who is it following you? Why?”
“I don’t know; but I— Look!”
She interrupted herself with a cry of dismay. Mr. Smith whirled in his seat, and there, peering in the open cab window, directly over his shoulder, was the face of—M. Remi! He had jumped for it and was standing on the running board outside. The girl’s fingers gripped Mr. Smith’s desperately, her slender body all atremble.
“Get down from there!” Mr. Smith commanded sharply.
“Mademoiselle et Monsieur—” M. Remi began.
“Get down from there!” Mr. Smith commanded the second time.
“Ah! M. Smith!”
The note of triumph in M. Remi’s voice gave notice that he had recognized the man, even had he not used the name, and he peered intently into the face of the girl. Evidently he had not the slightest purpose of getting off the running board. The cab gained speed. The girl, pressed closely against Mr. Smith’s side, was moaning a little. Suddenly that mighty arm from Passaic swung, and a fist, hard as nails, landed squarely on the point of M. Remi’s chin.
JUST as M. Polichinelle vanishes in the Théâtre Guignol, so vanished M. Remi. He tumbled backward without a sound. The thud of his fall on the pavement startled the chauffeur, who seemed to awake suddenly to the extraordinary happenings in his cab, and the taxi began to slow. Mr. Smith thrust his head out the window over the chauffeur’s shoulder.
“You understand English, don’t you?”
“Oui, oui! Yes, sir.”
“Well, this is a revolver here in my right hand—this, I mean,” and Mr. Smith prodded him in the small of the back with his huge forefinger. “A gun, do you understand? Now it’s up to you to run like the deuce. Beat it!”
“But, Monsieur, ze gentleman—”
“Drive on!”
There was no disobeying that order, particularly as it was emphasized by two more vigorous pokes in the back. Monsieur had said it was only a revolver! Oh, la la! François’ frenzied imagination pictured it as a cannon. He fumbled with his clutches and levers, and the taxi went speeding up the Champs Élysées. Mr. Smith, looking back a block or more, saw two men assisting M. Remi to his feet. With a sigh of content he settled down into his seat beside the girl.
“I am not going to faint, really I am not,” she stammered; but the tone of her voice, the icy grip of her fingers, convinced Mr. Smith that she was going to faint. “I hope—I hope the gentleman was not hurt!”
“Of course not,” Mr. Smith assured her in nervous haste. “I just gave him a little tap; sort of pushed him, that’s all. If you think you are going to faint, I wish you’d tell me first where we’re going, unless the chauffeur knows.”
“He—he knows.”
Whereupon she did faint. Mr. Smith felt the lithe figure grow suddenly rigid, then crumple up, and she sank almost into his arms. Vaguely he knew that a person in a fainting condition required air; so he stripped off the heavy veil that hid the girl’s face. It was Edna Clarke! Of course! He knew that! Edna Clarke, pallid as death, limp, motionless! He sat staring at her hopelessly, waiting and wondering at the strangeness of it all.
MEANWHILE the taxicab sped like the wind up the Champs Élysées, darted round the Arc de Triomphe, and straightened out into the Avenue Victor Hugo. Mr. Smith hadn’t the faintest idea where they were going; but they were on their way. François had not forgotten ze beeg American wiz ze beeg cannon. The little car was rocking with speed, and the muffler fairly boomed with the power he was crowding on.
For a mile or more past the Arc de Triomphe they sped on, Edna still lying against him inert, helpless. Then it occurred to Mr. Smith to look back. It so happens that the Avenue Victor Hugo is not a crowded thoroughfare after half-past ten o’clock at night; so he could see clearly—see another taxicab rocking, swaying along in pursuit at breakneck speed. He watched it, fascinated, for an instant, and then he knew! M. Remi was in that car. and it was gaining on them! Mr. Smith’s massive jaws closed with a snap; he leaned out and poked François in the back.
“Faster!” he commanded.
“She no go faster,” François wailed in dire distress. “She no go faster!”
Suddenly they went reeling across a wide avenue with a jounce that made Mr. Smith plop up and down inside like a pea in a cigar box. and then they seemed to be in the midst of a forest—it was the Bois de Boulogne following a ribbon like road. Just before they swung round the first turn Mr. Smith glanced back again. He wasn’t positive, but his impression was that the cab in the rear had gained substantially. And that called for more thought. After twenty full seconds spent in consideration of the matter, he thrust his head out of the cab to hold converse with François. “Now, see here, son,” he began, “don’t stop driving, but listen to me. The harder you listen the less liable you are to get shot up.”
“Oui, oui, Monsieur!”
“Here’s a one hundred-franc note—that’s twenty whole dollars in the country where folks live. I’m sticking it into your outside coat pocket here.”
“Merci, Monsieur!”
“Now you are to drive just as fast as you know how until you come to some place where there is a sharp curve and lots of woods,” Mr. Smith continued crisply. “Immediately you round that turn, out of sight of this taxi that’s following, you are to stop for one second and let me get out. Do you get it?”
“Oui, Monsieur.”
“When I get out of the cab, you’re to drive! You’ve been piking along here like a three-legged goat. After I’m out of the cab, drive, do you understand? Go a long way, and go fast!”
“Oui, oui. You want me to—to—what you call him?—shake ze cab?”
“There’s a detective in that cab, and if you don’t shake it you’re pinched.”
Another hundred yards, and Mr. Smith saw a glint of water straight ahead.
“Ze curve, Monsieur,” François announced.
They swished round a corner, and the taxi stopped. Mr. Smith, with a feeling almost of sacrilege, gathered up the limp, inert figure of the girl in his powerful arms and leaped out.
“Now, son—skiddoo for you! Twenty-three!”
The little taxi fairly leaped out of its tracks, and was lost instantly in a cloud of dust. Mr. Smith, holding his precious burden close, dodged back into the woods just as the pursuing taxi swerved round the corner and flashed past. Sheltered by the gloom of the trees, he stood looking after it for a moment, then, grinning cheerfully, strode off through the forest.