“Why a gray one?”

“I can’t tell, but it is gray, and it has six toes on every foot.”

Smith truly felt that he was now being trifled with.

“Brown,” he said, trying to speak civilly, “if anybody in the five boroughs had come to me with affidavits and told me yesterday how you were going to behave this morning——­”

His voice, rising unconsciously as the realization of his outrageous wrongs dawned upon him, rang out above the rattle and grinding of the car, and the girl turned abruptly and looked straight at him and then at Brown.

The pure, fearless beauty of the gaze, the violet eyes widening a little in surprise, silenced both young men.

She inspected Brown for an instant, then turned serenely to her calm contemplation of the crowded street once more.  Yet her dainty, close-set ears looked as though they were listening.

The young men gazed at one another.

“That girl is well bred,” said Smith in a low, agitated voice.  “You—­you wouldn’t think of venturing to speak to her!”

“I’m obliged to, I tell you!  This all happened before.  I recognize everything as it occurs....  Even to your making a general nuisance of yourself.”

Smith straightened up.

“I’m going to push you forcibly from this car.  Do you remember that incident?”

[Illustration:  “The lid of the basket tilted a little.  Then a plaintive voice said ’Meow-w’.”]

“No,” said Brown with conviction, “that incident did not happen.  You only threatened to do it.  I remember now.”

In spite of himself Smith felt a slight chill creep up over his neck and inconvenience his spine.

He said, deeply agitated:  “What a terrible position for me to be in—­with a friend suddenly gone mad in the streets of New York and running after a basket containing what he believes to be a cat.  A Cat! Good——­”

Brown gripped his arm.  “Watch it!” he breathed.

The lid of the basket tilted a little, between lid and rim a soft, furry, six-toed gray paw was thrust out.  Then a plaintive voice said, “Meow-w!”

[Illustration]

X

THE LID OFF

An Alliance, Offensive, Defensive, and Back-Fensive

Smith, petrified, looked blankly at the paw.

For a while he remained stupidly incapable of speech or movement, then, as though arousing from a bad dream: 

“What are you going to do, anyway?” he asked with an effort.  “This car is bound to stop sometime, I suppose, and—­and then what?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do.  Whatever I do will be the thing that ought to happen to me, to that cat and to that girl—­that is the thing which is destined to happen.  That’s all I know about it.”

His friend passed an unsteady hand across his brow.

“This whole proceeding is becoming a nightmare,” he said unsteadily.  “Am I awake?  Is this Forty-second Street?  Hold up some fingers, Brown, and let me guess how many you hold up, and if I guess wrong I’m home in bed asleep and the whole thing is off.”