Swarming up the curved stairway to the roof, Lanyard dropped into the rear
seat, looking back.
The group round the doorway was recovering from its stupefaction. Three
struck off from it toward the line of waiting cars. Of these the foremost
was Ekstrom.
Simultaneously the 'bus, lumbering drunkenly, lurched into Columbus Circle,
and the roadster left the curb carrying in addition to the driver two
passengers--Ekstrom on the running-board.
Tardily Lanyard repented of that impulse which had moved him to bestow his
one weapon upon Cecelia Brooke.
The night air had a biting edge. A chill rain had begun to drizzle down in
minute globules of mist, which both lent each street light its individual
nimbus of gold and dulled deceitfully the burnished asphaltum, rendering
its surface greasy and treacherous. More than once Lanyard feared lest
the 'bus skid and overturn; and before the old red brick building between
Broadway and Eighth Avenue shut out the western sector of the Circle, he
saw the roadster, driven insanely, shoot crabwise toward the curb, than
answer desperate work at the wheel and whirl madly, executing a volte-face
so violent that Ekstrom's hold was broken and he was hurled a dozen feet
away.
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