The Owl Taxi. Footner Hulbert

CHAPTER I

       THE TRANSFER

       Table of Contents

      At eleven o'clock of a moist night in December, Gregory Parr was making his way far westward on Twenty-third Street. At his right hand stretched that famous old row of dignified dwellings with pilasters and little front yards, and ahead of him was Tenth Avenue, the stronghold of the Irish. The wet pavements glistened under the street lamps, and the smell of influenza was in the air. The street was deserted except for a cross-town car at long intervals, hurling itself blithely through the night on a flat wheel.

      Greg was on his way to the Brevard Line pier at the foot of the street to take passage on the great Savoia, premier steamship of her day and on this particular trip the "Christmas ship." The Savoia ran as true to the hour as a railway train, and was scheduled to leave at one A.M. in order to make the best rail connections. There was no reason why Greg should have walked to the pier except that at the last moment his heart was loath to leave little old New York, and even the least interesting of her streets called to him. As he walked he communed with himself somewhat after this fashion: "Lord! I didn't know the old burg meant so much to me till I made up my mind to leave it! After all maybe I'm a fool to pull up stakes here. I know the folks on this side; their ways are my ways. I speak New York. Perhaps in London I'll be like a fish in the grass." But his baggage was on the pier and he had paid a deposit on his ticket. It never occurred to him that he could still change his mind. On such trifles do the weightiest human decisions turn!

      He crossed Tenth Avenue and passed through the long block beyond with its escarpments of dark factories on either hand. At Eleventh Avenue the street opened into a plaza with the ferry houses facing him from the other side, and a long line of steamship piers stretching south, of which the Brevard pier was the nearest. Over the pier sheds Greg saw the masthead light of the Savoia gleaming brightly and heard the soft murmur of escaping steam. On the corner was a little waterfront hotel, the Brevard House, with inviting brilliantly lighted bar. Greg was irresistibly drawn to enter. "One last drink to my own town," he said to himself.

      Within, the bar was absolutely typical, and therefore dear to Greg. There was the very red and well-wiped mahogany counter, finished with a round cornice to lean the elbows on, and with a brass rail below for feet. Behind the counter the usual elaborate structure of mahogany and plate glass reared itself to the ceiling, a super-mantel-piece as it were, while between counter and mirrors moved a pink-cheeked young man, in command, one might say, of the battalion of bottles behind him. Bar-tenders used to be mustachioed, but now they are smooth and pink-cheeked.

      To Greg's disappointment he found the place almost empty; he desired company; he longed to hear the racy speech of the Manhattan pavements before he finally shook their dust from his feet. There were two travelers, but they, having downed their drinks, were preparing to leave; across the room sitting at a table was a human derelict, without which no picture of a bar-room would be complete—but he was sleeping under his hat like a candle under its extinguisher. The only other customer present was a taxi-driver who was making friendly overtures to the bar-tender. For some reason the pink-cheeked one scorned him. These instinctive antipathies are impossible to explain; the bar-tender was perfectly willing to hob-nob with the two travelers—invited to drink with them he took a swig out of his private stock of cold tea with gusto and charged them fifteen cents for the privilege; but as for the poor taxi-driver, well, they did not belong to the same herd, that was all.

      Rebuffed in this direction the driver turned eagerly to the latest comer, Greg. There was something almost pathetic in his anxiety to make friends. Every soul has those moments of desperate lonesomeness. Greg was not at all backward in responding. The driver was a spare little man in an overcoat sizes too big for him and almost reaching the ground. Greg was reminded of an old illustration of the Artful Dodger. He had a sharp, humorous, apelike face, much seamed, and in his eyes was a light at once childlike, impudent and deprecating. Taxi-drivers, that is to say "owl-drivers" like this one, wear no uniform,