Everybody got out. Mr. Sachs’s presumption was correct. One of the
back wheels had failed to leap over a hole in Fifth Avenue some eighteen
inches deep and two feet long.
"What is that hole?" asked Edward Henry.
"Well," said Mr. Sachs. "It’s just a hole. We’d better transfer to a
taxi." He gave calm orders to his chauffeur.
Four empty taxis passed down the sunny magnificence of Fifth Avenue and
ignored Mr. Sachs’s urgent waving. The fifth stopped. The baggage was
strapped and tied to it: which process occupied much time. Edward
Henry, fuming against delay, gazed around. A nonchalant policeman on a
superb horse occupied the middle of the road. Tram cars passed
constantly across the street in front of his caracoling horse, dividing
a route for themselves in the wild ocean of traffic as Moses cut into
the Red Sea. At intervals a knot of persons, intimidated and yet
daring, would essay the voyage from one pavement to the opposite
pavement; there was no half-way refuge for these adventurers, as in
decrepit London; some apparently arrived; others seemed to disappear
forever in the feverish welter of confused motion and were never heard
of again. The policeman, easily accommodating himself to the
caracolings of his mount, gazed absently at Edward Henry, and Edward
Henry gazed first at the policeman, and then at the high decorated
grandeur of the buildings, and then at the Assyrian taxi into which Mr.
Sachs was now ingeniously inserting Carlo Trent. He thought:
"No mistake--this street is alive. But what cemeteries they must have!"
He followed Carlo, with minute precautions, into the interior of the
taxi. And then came the supremely delicate operation--that of
introducing a third person into the same vehicle. It was accomplished;
three chins and six knees fraternized in close intimacy; but the door
would not shut. Wheezing, snorting, shaking, complaining, the taxi drew
slowly away from Mr. Sachs’s luxurious automobile and left it forlorn to
its chauffeur. Mr. Sachs imperturbably smiled. ("I have two other
automobiles," said Mr. Sachs.) In some sixty seconds the taxi stopped
in front of the tremendous glass awning of the Stuyvesant. The baggage
was unstrapped; the passengers were extracted one by one from the cell,
and Edward Henry saw Mr. Sachs give two separate dollar bills to the
driver.
"By Jove!" he murmured.
"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Sachs politely.
"Nothing!" said Edward Henry.
They walked into the hotel, and passed through a long succession of
corridors and vast public rooms surging with well-dressed men and women.
"What’s all this crowd for?" asked Edward Henry.
"What crowd?" asked Mr. Sachs, surprised.
Edward Henry saw that he had blundered.
"I prefer the upper floors," remarked Mr. Sachs as they were being flung
upward in a gilded elevator, and passing rapidly all numbers from 1 to
14.
The elevator made an end of Carlo Trent’s manhood. He collapsed. Mr.
Sachs regarded him, and then said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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