“I know that now, bud. Still, things ain’t right - least, they don’t seem that way to me.”
“Why not?”
“You ain’t handling the car like you knew where you were going.”
Harry was silent.
“Tell me where we are going,” demanded English Johnny. “What was the address I gave you?”
Harry was about to blurt out the reply, when he sensed something in the man’s pugnacious red face. He knew instinctively that English Johnny was suspicious. For some reason the man was sorry that he had given his address to this strange taxi driver.
“Come on!” English Johnny persisted. “Where did I tell you to take me?”
“I can’t remember, sir,” replied Vincent.
“You don’t remember?”
“No, sir.”
“What kind of a taxi driver are you, anyway?”
“I’m an all right driver; I just forgot the address you gave. All I can remember is East One Hundred and Something Street. I was figuring on asking you again when we got up around the Nineties.”
“So that’s it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Didn’t you check up on the number when I gave it to you - back where I got in the cab? Repeat it to yourself, I mean, so you wouldn’t forget it?”
“No, sir. I didn’t catch it exactly when you gave it to me. Then we stopped at the lunch wagon; and after that trouble back on the avenue, I got so mixed up that I couldn’t even remember the street you told me.”
Another taxi pulled up in back of Vincent’s cab. The driver came forward to listen to the argument.
“What’s the row?” the fellow asked Harry.
“Don’t ask him,” interrupted English Johnny. “He wouldn’t know.”
“How so?” asked the newcomer, surveying the beefy-faced man suspiciously. That was natural enough, Harry thought. One taxi driver would side with another.
“Looka here, bud,” said English Johnny. “I gotta right to be taken straight to a place, ain’t I? But this fellow ain’t doing it. He admits he forgot the number I gave him. I don’t believe he ever drove a cab before.”
“Show him your licenses, pal,” said the taxi man.
“That’s right,” English Johnny chimed in. “Show ‘em to me.”
Harry fumbled in his pocket, playing for time.
“He hasn’t got em,” jeered English Johnny. “I shoulda let the cop run him in. He’s a phony.”
The other man was studying Harry curiously.
“I guess you’re right,” he admitted. “He don’t look like a regular taxi man. What’s the racket, fellow? There’s been a lot of cabs snatched off the street lately. You pulling that game?”
“We’ll find out quick enough,” growled English Johnny, glancing back down the street. Harry twisted around in his seat and saw a policeman approaching.
English Johnny waved an arm for assistance.
Silently, Harry slipped the car into gear.
But English Johnny had leaped on to the running board. His beefy face, usually affable, was now distorted with anger. The cab hadn’t started rolling yet.
“Cab stealer, eh?” he shouted. “Maybe you were going to run me out somewhere to grab my dough. Well, your game’s up!”
His huge hand clamped upon Harry’s shoulder. An instant later, the man at the wheel swung his left elbow straight upward. It landed squarely on the point of English Johnny’s chin.
The man with the bulldog jaw was staggered for a moment. The interfering taxi driver joined English Johnny on the running board, and saved him from falling off.
Turning the wheel sharply with his right hand, and stepping-on the gas, Harry drew back his left and thrust the open palm against English Johnny’s face. The big fellow went back, and the sharp turn of the car caused him to lose his balance and tumble in the street.
The other man was spilled from the running board by the force of English Johnny’s catapulting bulk.
Harry looked back over his shoulder. English Johnny had regained his feet. He was in the middle of the street, shaking his mighty fist, and shouting incoherently.
The genuine driver ran back to give chase in his cab. The policeman had by then reached the scene of the recent action.
Harry swung his car grimly as he turned a corner. He raced down an avenue, cut off to the right along a side street, and commenced a twisting, bewildering course to elude pursuit.
Harry was driving rapidly now. He had the feel of the wheel, and he was pleased with the easy way in which the cab handled. He roared onto Tenth Avenue and whirled down that broad thoroughfare until he reached the Excelsior Garage.
An attendant opened the door. Vincent parked the car in the vacant corner, and changed to his street clothes.
“I’ll get the cab tomorrow,” he remarked, as he left the garage. “Maybe I’ll send some one after it.”
He walked down the avenue and called to a passing cab, and was whisked to the Metrolite Hotel.
The telephone bell rang just as he was getting into bed.
“Mr. Vincent?” came a voice
“Yes.”
“I wondered WHERE you were. DID you forget that I was to call you this evening? I am THE MAN who sold you the radio set for your friend. Where do you want it to GO?”
Vincent caught the emphasis instantly.
“Where did the man go?”
The man must be English Johnny.
Slowly and carefully, Harry repeated the address that had been given him in the cab - the address which he had so wisely pretended to have forgotten.
“Thank you, Mr. Vincent,” came the voice.
The receiver clicked.
Harry walked to the window and whistled a soft tune as he gazed out at the twinkling lights of Manhattan. It had been an exciting night. He had tumbled into trouble and out again. English Johnny Harmon! What did this fellow have to do with the game?
He shrugged his shoulders. The whole affair was a mystery to him. What would be his next mission?
He was still wondering when he fell asleep.
CHAPTER XXIII
ENGLISH JOHNNY’S GAME
Big, bluff English Johnny arrived at his uptown residence, still fuming because the pretending taxi driver had eluded him. He and the policeman had followed Harry Vincent in the other cab, but had given up the chase after a few blocks, for their quarry had gained too great a start.
Furthermore, they had not detected the license number of the fleeing cab. It had been well down the street before they had made any effort to note the license plate.
English Johnny, however, had remembered Harry’s face. Some day, he said to himself, he would encounter him, and would square accounts.
English Johnny had continued home in the other cab, but had given the driver a false address, and had dismissed the vehicle some distance from the house where he lived. He then walked up the street to an unpretentious building, unlocked the door of the house, and entered.
He climbed the steps to an upstairs room of the simple two-story house. There he opened a letter which he had found in the mail box.
The beefy-faced man whistled as he read. He was evidently pleased by the message he had received.
He tore the letter into pieces, dropped the fragments in a large ash tray, and burned them. After scattering
