When he was able once more to throw the gears into high, the chase was a
long block ahead.
They were entering Longacre Square before he made up that loss.
And at Forty-fourth Street, again, a stream of east-bound cars edged in
between the two, reducing Lanyard's driver to the verge of gibbering
lunacy.
A car resembling "Karl's" was crossing Broadway at Forty-second Street when
Lanyard was still on Seventh Avenue north of the Times Building.
But only a minute later his driver pulled up in front of the Hotel
Knickerbocker, and Lanyard, peering through the forward window, saw the
number 76-385 on the license plate of a taxicab drawing away, empty, from
the curb beneath the hotel canopy.
He tossed the second gold piece to the driver as his feet touched the
sidewalk, and shouldered through a cluster of men and women at the main
entrance to the lobby.
That rendezvous of Broadway was fairly thronged despite the slack
mid-evening hour, between the dinner and the supper crushes; but Lanyard
reviewed in vain the little knots of guests and loungers; if "Karl" were
among them, he was nobody whom Lanyard had learned to know by sight on
board the _Assyrian_.
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