Midnight.

by Octavus Roy Cohen.

CHAPTER I

OUT OF THE STORM

Taxicab No. 92,381 skidded crazily on the icy pavement of Atlantic Avenue. Spike Walters, its driver, cursed roundly as he applied the brakes and with difficulty obtained control of the little closed car.

Depressing the clutch pedal, he negotiated the frozen thoroughfare and parked his car in the lee of the enormous Union Station, which bulked forbiddingly in the December midnight.

Atlantic Avenue was deserted. The lights at the main entrance of the Union Station glowed frigidly. Opposite, a single arc-lamp on the corner of Cypress Street cast a white, cheerless light on the gelid pavement.

The few stores along the avenue were dark, with the exception of the warmly lighted White Star restaurant directly opposite the Stygian spot where Spike's car was parked.

The city was in the grip of the first cold wave of the year. For two days the rain had fallen--a nasty, drizzling rain which made the going soggy and caused people to greet one another with frowns. Late that afternoon the mercury had started a rapid downward journey. Fires were piled high in the furnaces, automobile-owners poured alcohol into their radiators.

The streets were deserted early, and the citizens, for the most part, had retired shiveringly under mountains of blankets and down quilts still redolent of moth-b.a.l.l.s.

Winter had come with freezing blasts which swept around corners and chilled to the bone. The rain of two days became a driving sleet, which formed a mirror of ice over the city.

On the seat of his yellow taxicab, Spike Walters drew a heavy lap-robe more closely about his husky figure and shivered miserably. Fortunately, the huge bulk of the station to his right protected him in a large measure from the shrieking wintry winds. Mechanically Spike kept his eyes focused upon the station entrance, half a block ahead.

But no one was there. Nowhere was there a sign of life, nowhere an indication of warmth or cheer or comfort. With fingers so numb that they were almost powerless to do the bidding of his mind, Spike drew forth his watch and glanced at it. Midnight!

Spike replaced the watch, blew on his numb fingers in a futile effort to restore warmth, slipped his hands back into a pair of heavy--but, on this night, entirely inadequate--driving-gloves, and gave himself over to a mental rebellion against the career of a professional taxi-driver.

"Worst night I've ever known," he growled to himself; and he was not far wrong.

Midnight! No train due until 12.25, and that an accommodation from some small town up-State. No taxi fares on such a train as that. The north-bound fast train--headed for New York--that was late, too. Due at 11.55, Spike had seen a half-frozen station-master mark it up as being fifty minutes late. Perhaps a pa.s.senger to be picked up there--some sleepy, disgruntled, entirely unhappy person eager to attain the warmth and coziness of a big hotel.

Yet Spike knew that he must wait. The company for which he worked specialized on service. It boasted that every train was met by a yellow taxicab--and this was Spike's turn for all-night duty at the Union Station.

All the independent taxi-drivers had long since deserted their posts. The parking s.p.a.ce on Cypress Street, opposite the main entrance of the station--a s.p.a.ce usually crowded with commercial cars--was deserted. No private cars were there, either. Spike seemed alone in the drear December night, his car an exotic of the early winter.

Ten minutes pa.s.sed--fifteen. The cold bit through Spike's overcoat, battled to the skin, and chewed to the bone. It was well nigh unbearable.

The young taxi-driver's lips became blue. He tried to light a cigarette, but his fingers were unable to hold the match.

He looked around. A street-car, bound for a suburb, pa.s.sed noisily. It paused briefly before the railroad-station, neither discharging nor taking on a pa.s.senger, then clanged protestingly on its way. Impressed in Spike's mind was a mental picture of the chilled motorman, and of the conductor huddled over the electric heater within the car. Spike felt a personal resentment against that conductor. Comfort seemed unfair on a night like this; heat a luxury more to be desired than much fine gold.

From across the street the light of the White Star Cafe beckoned.

Ordinarily Spike was not a patron of the White Star, nor other eating establishments of its cla.s.s. The White Star was notoriously unsanitary, its food poisonously indigestible; but as Spike's eyes were held hypnotically by the light he thought of two things--within the circle of that light he could find heat and a scalding liquid which was flavored with coffee.

The vision was too much for Spike. The fast train, due now at 12.45, might bring a fare. It was well beyond the bounds of reason that he would get a pa.s.senger from the accommodation due in a few minutes. There were no casuals abroad.

The young driver clambered with difficulty from his seat. He staggered as he tried to stand erect, his numb limbs protesting against the burden of his healthy young body. A gale howled around the dark Jackson Street corner of the long, rambling station, and Spike defensively covered both ears with his gloved hands.

He made his way eagerly across the street; slipping and sliding on the gla.s.sy surface, head bent against the driving sleet, clothes crackling where particles of ice had formed. Spike reached the door of the eating-house, opened it, and almost staggered as the warmth of the place smote him like a hot blast.

For a few seconds he stood motionless, reveling in the sheer animal comfort of the change. Then he made his way to the counter, seated himself on a revolving stool, and looked up at the waiter who came stolidly forward from the big, round-bellied stove at the rear.

"h.e.l.lo, George!"

The restauranteur nodded.

"h.e.l.lo!"

"My gosh! What a night!"

"Pretty cold, ain't it?"

"Cold?" Spike Walters looked up antagonistically. "Say, you don't know what cold means. I'd rather have your job to-night than a million dollars. Only if I had a million dollars I'd buy twenty stoves, set 'em in a circle, build a big fire in each one, sit in the middle, and tell winter to go to thunder--that's what I'd do. Now, George, hustle and lay me out a cup of coffee, hot--get that?--and a couple of them greasy doughnuts of yourn."

The coffee and doughnuts were duly produced, and the stolid Athenian retired to the torrid zone of his stove. Spike bravely tried one of the doughnuts and gave it up as a bad job, but he quaffed the coffee with an eagerness which burned his throat and imparted a pleasing sensation of inward warmth. Then he stretched luxuriously and lighted a cigarette.

He glanced through the long-unwashed window of the White Star Cafe--"Ladies and gents welcome," it announced--and shuddered at the prospect of again braving the elements. Across the street his unprotesting taxicab stood parked parallel to the curb; beyond it glowered the end of the station. To the right of the long, rambling structure he could see the occasional glare of switch engines and track-walkers' lanterns in the railroad yards.

As he looked, he saw the headlight of the locomotive at the head of the accommodation split the gloom. Instinctively Spike rose, paid his check, and stood uncomfortably at the door, b.u.t.toning the coat tightly around his neck.

Of course it was impossible that the accommodation carried a fare for him; but then duty was duty, and Spike took exceeding pride in the company for which he worked. The company's slogan of service was part of Spike's creed. He opened the door, recoiled for a second as the gale swept angrily against him, then plunged blindly across the street. He clambered into the seat of his cab, depressed the starter, and eventually was answered by the reluctant cough of the motor. He raced it for a while, getting the machinery heated up preparatory to the possibility of a run.

Then he saw the big doors at the main entrance of the station open and a few melancholy pa.s.sengers, brought to town by the accommodation train, step to the curb, glance about in search of a street-car, and then duck back into the station. Spike shoved his clutch in and crawled forward along the curb, leaving the inky shadows of the far end of the station, and emerging finally into the effulgence of the arc at the corner of Cypress Street.

Once again the door of the Union Station opened. This time Spike took a professional interest in the person who stepped uncertainly out into the night. Long experience informed him that this was a fare.

She was of medium height, and comfortably guarded against the frigidity of the night by a long fur coat b.u.t.toned snugly around her neck. She wore a small squirrel tam, and was heavily veiled. In her right hand she carried a large suit-case and in her left a purse.

She stepped to the curb and looked around inquiringly. She signalled the cab. Even as he speeded his car forward, Spike wondered at her indifference to the almost unbearable cold.

"Cab, miss?"

He pulled up short before her.

"Yes." Her tone was almost curt. She had her hand on the door handle before Spike could make a move to alight. "Drive to 981 East End Avenue."

Without leaving the driver's seat, Spike reached for her suit-case and put it beside him. The woman--a young woman, Spike reflected--stepped inside and slammed the door. Spike fed the gas and started, whirling south on Atlantic Avenue for two blocks, and then turning to his left across the long viaduct which marks the beginning of East End Avenue.

He settled himself for a long and unpleasant drive. To reach 981 East End Avenue he had to drive nearly five miles straight in the face of the December gale.

And then he found himself wondering about the woman. Her coat--a rich fur thing of black and gray--her handbag, her whole demeanor--all bespoke affluence. She had probably been visiting at some little town, and had come down on the accommodation; but no one had been there to meet her.

Anyway, Spike found himself too miserable and too cold to reflect much about his pa.s.senger.

He drove into a head wind. The sleet slapped viciously against his windshield and stuck there. The patent device he carried for the purpose of clearing rain away refused to work. Spike shoved his windshield up in order to afford a vision of the icy asphalt ahead.

And then he grew cold in earnest. He seemed to freeze all the way through. He drove mechanically, becoming almost numb as the wind, unimpeded now, struck him squarely. He lost all interest in what he was doing or where he was going. He called himself a fool for having left the cozy warmth of the White Star Cafe. He told himself--

Suddenly he clamped on the brakes. It was a narrow squeak! The end of the long freight train rumbled on into the night. Spike hadn't seen it; only the racket of the big cars as they crossed East End Avenue, and then the lights on the rear of the caboose, had warned him.

He stopped his car for perhaps fifteen seconds to make sure that the crossing was clear, then started on again, a bit shaken by the narrow escape. He b.u.mped cautiously across the railroad tracks.