"Wha'--dyeh--board--this--car--for!" he gasped, sliding fiercely up beside Brown. "Get off or I'll drag you off!"
But Brown only shook his head with an infatuated smile.
"Is it that girl?" said Smith, incensed. "Are you a--a Broadway Don Juan, or are you a respectable lawyer with a glimmering sense of common decency and an intention to keep a social engagement at the Carringtons' to-day?"
And Smith drew out his timepiece and flourished it furiously under Brown's handsome and sun-tanned nose.
But Brown only slid along the seat away from him, saying:
"Don't bother me, Jim; this is too momentous a crisis in my life to have a well-intentioned but intellectually dwarfed friend butting into me and running about under foot."
"Intellectually d-d--do you mean _me?_" asked Smith, unable to believe his ears. "_Do_ you?"
"Yes, I do! Because a miracle suddenly happens to me on Forty-second Street, and you, with your mind of a stockbroker, unable to appreciate it, come clattering and clamoring after me about a house party--a common- place, every-day, social appointment, when I have a full-blown miracle on my hands!"
"What miracle?" faltered Smith, stupefied.
"What miracle? Haven't I been telling you that I've been having that queer sense that all this has happened before? Didn't I suddenly begin-- as though compelled by some unseen power--to foretell things? Didn't I prophesy the coming of this cross-town car? Didn't I even name its color before it came into sight? Didn't I warn you that I'd probably get into it? Didn't I reveal to you that a big straw hat and a pretty summer gown----"
"Confound it!" almost shouted Smith, "There are about five thousand cherry-colored cross-town cars in this town. There are about five million white hats and dresses in this borough. There are five billion girls wearing 'em----!" "Yes; but the _wicker basket_" breathed Brown. "How do you account for _that?_... And, anyway, you annoy me, Smith. Why don't you get out of the car and go somewhere?"
"I want to know where you are going before I knock your head off."
"I don't know," replied Brown, serenely.
"Are you actually attempting to follow that girl?" whispered Smith, horrified.
"Yes.... It sounds low, doesn't it? But it really isn't. It is something I can't explain--you couldn't understand even if I tried to enlighten you. The sentiment I harbor is too lofty for some to comprehend, too vague, too pure, too ethereal for----"
"I'm as lofty and ethereal as you are!" retorted Smith, hotly. "And I know a--an ethereal Lothario when I see him, too!"
"I'm not--though it looks like it--and I forgive you, Smithy, for losing your temper and using such language."
"Oh, you do?" said Smith, grinning with rage.
"Yes," nodded Brown, kindly. "I forgive you, but don't call me that again. You mean well, but I'm going to find out at last what all this maddening, tantalizing, unexplained and mysterious feeling that it all has occurred before really is. I'm going to trace it to its source; I'm going to compare notes with this highly intelligent girl."
"You're going to _speak_ to her?"
"I am. I must. How else can I compare data."
"I hope she'll call the police. If she doesn't _I_ will."
"Don't worry. She's part of this strange situation. She'll comprehend as soon as I begin to explain. She is intelligent; you only have to look at her to understand that."
Smith choking with impotent fury, nevertheless ventured a swift glance. Her undeniable beauty only exasperated him. "To think--to _think_," he burst out, "that a modest, decent, law-loving business man like me should suddenly awake to find his boyhood friend had turned into a godless votary of Venus!"
"I'm not a votary of Venus!" retorted Brown, turning pink. "I'll punch you if you say it again. I'm as decent and respectable a business man as you are! And my grammar is better. And, thank Heaven! I've intellect enough to recognize a miracle when it happens to me.... Do you think I am capable of harboring any sentiments that might bring the blush of coquetry to the cheek of modesty? Do you?"
"Well--well, _I_ don't know what you're up to!" Smith raised his voice in bewilderment and despair. "I don't know what possesses you to act this way. People don't experience miracles in New York cross-town cars. The wildest stretch of imagination could only make a coincidence out of this. There are trillions of girls in cross-town cars dressed just like this one."
"But the basket!"
"Another coincidence. There are quadrillions of wicker baskets."
"Not," said Brown, "with the contents of this one."
"Why not?"
Smith instinctively turned to look at the basket balanced daintily on the girl's knees.
He strove to penetrate its wicker exterior with concentrated gaze. He could see nothing but wicker.
"Well," he began angrily, "what _is_ in that basket? And how do _you_ know it--you lunatic?"
"Will you believe me if I tell you?"
"If you can offer any corroborative evidence----"
"Well, then--there's a cat in that basket."
"A--what?"
"A cat."
"How do you know?"
"I don't know how I know, but there's a big, gray cat in that basket."
"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."
Beekman Brown patted his friend on the shoulder.
"You take a cab, Smithy, and go somewhere. And if I don't come go on alone to the Carringtons'.... You don't mind going on and fixing things up with the Carringtons, do you?"
"Brown, _do_ you believe that The Green Mouse Society has got hold of you? _Do_ you?"
"I don't know and don't care.... Smith, I ask you plainly, did you ever before see such a perfectly beautiful girl as that one is?"
"Beekman, do you believe anything queer is going to result? You don't suppose _she_ has anything to do with this extraordinary freak of yours?"
"Anything to do with it? How?"
"I mean," he sank his voice to hoarser depths, "how do you know but that this girl, who pretends to pay no attention to us, _might_ be a--a--one of those clever, professional mesmerists who force you to follow 'em, and get you into their power, and exhibit you, and make you eat raw potatoes and tallow candles and tacks before an audience."
He peeped furtively at Brown, who did not appear uneasy.
"All I'm afraid of," added Smith, sullenly, "is that you'll get yourself into vaudeville or the patrol wagon."
He waited, but Brown made no reply.