steer.”
“Can’t you slacken up in front of the house, so that I can jump?”
“With that foot, sir? Impossible, and, anyway, I can’t slacken up. I think we’ll stop soon. I don’t know when it was charged, but a gentleman had it before I was sent out with it. It won’t he long, I think. I’ll run around the block, and maybe I can stop the next time.”
Orville groaned for a twofold reason: his ankle was jumping with pain, and he would lose the pleasure of taking Miss Badeau in to dinner, for it was a minute past seven.
He sat and gazed at his carpet slipper, and thought of the daintily shod feet of the adorable Annette, as the horseless carriage wound round the block. As they approached the house again, Orville imagined that they were slackening up, and he opened the door to be ready. It was now three minutes past seven, and dinner had begun beyond a doubt. The driver saw the door swing open, and said:
“Don’t jump, sir. I can’t stop yet. I’m afraid there’s a good deal of run in the machine.”
Orville looked up at the brownstone front of the house with an agonized stare, as if he would pull Mrs. Marten to the window by the power of his eyes. But Mrs. Marten was not in the habit of pressing her nose against the pane in an anxious search for tardy guests. In fact, it may be asserted with confidence that it is not a Fifth Avenue custom.
At that moment the purée was being served to Mrs. Marten’s guests, and to pretty Annette Badeau, who really looked disconsolate with the vacant chair beside her.
“Something has happened to Orville,” said Mrs. Marten, looking over her shoulder toward the hall door, “for he is punctuality itself.”
Mr. Joe Burton was a short, red-faced little man, with black mutton-chop whiskers of the style of ’76, and a way of looking in the most cheerful manner upon the dark side of things. “Dessay he’s been run over,” said he, choppily. “Wonder any one escapes. Steam-, gasoline-, electric-, horse-flesh-, man-propelled juggernauts. Ought to be prohibited.”
Annette could not repress a shudder. Her aunt saw it, and said: “Orville will never be run over. He’s too wide-awake. But it is very singular.”
“He may have been detained by an order for a story,” said Mr. Marten, also with the amiable purpose of consoling Annette. For both of the Martens knew how she felt toward Mr. Thornton.
“Maybe he’s lying on the front sidewalk, hit by a sign or bitten by a dog. Dogs ought not to be allowed in the city; they only add to the dangers of metropolitan existence,” jerked out Mr. Burton, in blithe tones, totally unaware that his remarks might worry Annette.
“Dear me! I wish you’d send some one out to see, Aunt Henrietta.”
“Nonsense, Annette. Mr. Burton is always an alarmist. But, Marie, you might step to the front door and look down the avenue to Fortieth Street. Mr. Thornton is always so punctual that it is peculiar.”
Marie went to the front door and looked down the street just as Thornton, gesticulating wildly, disappeared around the corner of Forty-first Street.
“Oh, why didn’t she come sooner!” said he aloud to himself. “At least they would know why I’m late. And she’ll be gone before I come round again. Was there ever such luck? Oh for a good old horse that could stop, a dear old nag that would pause and not go round and round like a blamed carrousel! Say, driver, isn’t there any way of stopping this cursed thing? Can’t you run it into a fence or a house? I’ll take the risk.”
“But I won’t, sir. These automobiles are very powerful, and one of them turned over a news-stand not long since and upset the stove in it and nearly burned up the news-man. But there’s plenty of time for it to stop. I don’t have to hurry back.”
“That’s lucky,” said Orville. “I thought maybe you’d have to leave me alone with the thing. But, say, she may run all night. Here I am due at a dinner. I’m tired of riding. This is no way to spend Christmas. Slacken up, and I’ll jump when I get around there again.”
“I tell you I can’t slacken up, and she’s going ten miles an hour. You’ll break your leg if you jump, and then where’ll you be?”
“I might be on their sidewalk, and then you could ring their bell, and they’d take me in.”
“And have you suing the company for damages? Oh, no, sir. I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped. The company won’t charge you for the extra time.”
“No, I don’t think it will,” said Thornton, savagely, the more so as his foot gave a twinge of pain just then.
* * * *
“There was no one in sight, ma’am,” said Marie when she returned.
“Probably he had an order for a story and got absorbed in it and forgot us,” said Mr. Marten; but this conjecture did not seem to suit Annette, for it did not fit what she knew of his character.
“Possibly he was dropped in an elevator,” said Mr. Burton. “Strain on elevators, particularly these electrical ones, is tremendous. Some of have got to drop. And a dropping elevator is no respecter of persons. You and I may be in one when it drops. Probably he was. Sure, I hope not, but as he is known to be the soul of punctuality, we must put forward some accident to account for his lateness. People aren’t always killed in elevator accidents. Are they, my dear?”
“Mr. Burton,” said his wife, “I wish you would give your morbid thoughts a rest. Don’t you see that Annette is sensitive?”
“Sensitive—with half of India starving and people being shot in the Transvaal and in China every day? It’s merely because she happens to know Orville that his death would be unpleasant. If a man in the Klondike were to read of it in the paper he wouldn’t remember it five minutes. But I don’t say he was in an elevator. Maybe some one sent him an infernal machine for a Christmas present. May have been blown up in a manhole or jumped from his window to avoid flames. Why, there are a million ways to account for his absence.”
Marie had opened the parlor windows a moment before, as the house was warm, and now there came the humming of a rapidly moving automobile. Mingled with it they heard distinctly, although faintly, “Mr. Marten, here I go.”
It gave them all an uncanny feeling. The fish was left untouched, and for a moment silence reigned. Then Mr. Marten sprang from the table and ran to the front door. He got there just in time to see an automobile dashing around a corner and to hear a distinctly articulated imprecation in the well-known voice of Orville Thornton.
In evening clothes and bareheaded Mr. Marten ran to Forty-first Street, and saw the vehicle approaching Sixth Avenue, its occupant still hurling strong language upon the evening air. Mr. Marten is something of a sprinter, although he has passed the fifty mark, and he resolved to solve the mystery. But before he had covered a third of the block in Forty-first Street he saw that he could not hope to overtake the runaway automobile, so he turned and ran back to the house, rightly surmising that the driver would circle the block.
When he reached his own door-step, badly winded, he saw the automobile coming full tilt up the avenue from Fortieth Street.
The rest of the diners were on the steps. “I think he’s coming,” he panted. “The driver must be intoxicated.”
A moment later they were treated to the spectacle of Orville, still hurling imprecations as he wildly gesticulated with both arms. Several boys were trying to keep up with the vehicle, but the pace was too swift. No policeman had yet discovered its rotary course.
As Orville came near the Marten mansion he cried “Ah-h-h!” in the relieved tones of one who has been falling for half an hour and at last sees ground in sight.
“What’s the matter?” shouted Mr. Marten, wonderingly, as the carriage, instead of stopping, sped along the roadway.
“Sprained foot. Can’t walk. Auto out of order. Can’t stop. Good-by till I come round again. Awful hungry. Merry Christmas!”