He completed his reclothing, slipped another automatic--to be found if and when he was searched--into his hip-pocket, lighted a cigarette, and picked up his hat. "So far I've been the world's premier boob," he said--"the most paralytic fall-guy that ever wore pants. And I'm going to get even or bust!" He was in high spirits. In spite of the ever-present fear for Susan which haunted the back of his mind, he was totally unable to repress his cheerfulness. The scent of battle always got him that way; and it was a trait of his which caused him great annoyance, for, when sparring and waiting about turned the corner into the straight run home of action, breathless and perilous, he seemed incapable of seeing things in their true values. But this callousness was only superficial. The real fact was that a high incentive whetted and honed the edge of his deep-rooted fighting instinct, making it seem predominant. "Where're you going?" asked Bill Kennedy. Storm paused at the door, and a reckless smile, reminiscent of the Viking warrior whose idea of heaven was a Valhalla where daily warfare provided eternal bliss, touched his lips. "Looking for trouble!" he said grimly. "And I think it's coming good and fast!" CHAPTER XXIII PANIC OF BIRDIE Susan sat quite still. The tension of Mecklen's fingers about her throat and the ferocious look on his face left her in no doubt but that he would carry out his threat if she gave him the ghost of an excuse. Besides, Susan wasn't the sort to go into hysterics when yammering for help didn't offer any reasonable hope of help being forthcoming. There were a few pedestrians about and not another car in sight--anyway, even if she did shout, and were heard, her would-be rescuers would have about as much chance of stopping that flying Hirondel as they would have of hopping over the Woolworth Building. "You needn't get excited," she said coldly. "I haven't screamed since they took me out of long clothes." Mecklen said nothing. Still retaining that menacing grip on her windpipe, he was hunched up over the steering wheel with his eyes glued to the road in front, pushing the car along as fast as he dared. "You can take your hands off," Susan added. "Someone might see us, and"--she groped about in her vocabulary of American for a phrase the Bowery boy might understand--"I don't want to be mistaken for the Sheba of a roughneck like you. I promise not to yell." Lew hesitated, and then withdrew his arm--not because her gibe cut any ice with him, but because he'd remembered his uniform and didn't want to make himself conspicuous if anyone _should_ happen to see them. Tough-looking policemen don't as a rule drive round in expensive cars with their arms round the necks of fashionably dressed girls; and Mecklen realised that he'd left enough tracks behind him already that night without adding to the number.