bending
his head towards the window aperture in order to glimpse the roofs of
the buildings, and never seeing the roofs.

"Now we're on Fifth," said Mr. Sachs, after a fearful lurch, with
pride.

Vistas of flags, high cornices, crowded pavements, marble, jewellery
behind glass--the whole seen through a roaring phantasmagoria of
competing and menacing vehicles!

And Edward Henry thought:

"This is my sort of place!"

The jolting recommenced. Carlo Trent rebounded limply, groaning
between cushions and upholstery. Edward Henry tried to pretend that he
was not frightened. Then there was a shock as of the concussion of
two equally unyielding natures. A pane of glass in Mr. Seven Sachs's
limousine flew to fragments and the car stopped.

"I expect that's a spring gone!" observed Mr. Sachs with tranquillity.
"Will happen, you know, sometimes!"

Everybody got out. Mr. Sachs's presumption was correct. One of the
back wheels had failed to leap over a hole in Fifth Avenue some
eighteen inches deep and two feet long.

"What is that hole?" asked Edward Henry.

"Well," said Mr. Sachs, "it's just a hole. We'd better transfer to a
taxi." He gave calm orders to his chauffeur.

Four empty taxis passed down the sunny magnificence of Fifth Avenue
and ignored Mr. Sachs's urgent waving. The fifth stopped. The baggage
was strapped and tied to it: which process occupied much time. Edward
Henry, fuming against delay, gazed around. A nonchalant policeman on
a superb horse occupied the middle of the road. Tram-cars passed
constantly across the street in front of his caracoling horse,
dividing a route for themselves in the wild ocean of traffic as Moses
cut into the Red Sea. At intervals a knot of persons, intimidated and
yet daring, would essay the voyage from one pavement to the opposite
pavement; there was no half-way refuge for these adventurers, as in
decrepit London; some apparently arrived; others seemed to disappear
for ever in the feverish welter of confused motion and were never
heard of again. The policeman, easily accommodating himself to the
caracolings of his mount, gazed absently at Edward Henry, and Edward
Henry gazed first at the policeman, and then at the high decorated
grandeur of the buildings, and then at the Assyrian taxi into which
Mr. Sachs was now ingeniously inserting Carlo Trent. He thought:

"No mistake--this street is alive. But what cemeteries they must
have!"

He followed Carlo, with minute precaution