"Allen, Grant - Miss Cayley's Adventures 03 - The Adenture of the Inquisitive American" - читать интересную книгу автора (Allen Grant)

Taunus suddenly. It was an abrupt, steep climb; but I
flatter myself I am a tolerable mountain cyclist. I rode
sturdily on; my pursuer darted after me. But on this stiff
upward grade my light weight and agile ankle-action told; I
began to distance him. He seemed afraid that I would give
him the slip, and called out suddenly, with a whoop, in
English, 'Stop, miss!' I looked back with dignity, but
answered nothing. He put on the pace, panting; I pedalled
away, and got clear from him.

At a turn of the corner, however, as luck would have it I
was pulled up short by a mounted policeman. He blocked the
road with his horse, like an ogre, and asked me, in a very
gruff Swabian voice, if this was a licensed bicycle. I had
no idea, till he spoke, that any license was required;
though to be sure I might have guessed it; for modern
Germany is studded with notices at all the street corners,
to inform you in minute detail that everything is forbidden.
I stammered out that I did not know. The mounted policeman
drew near and inspected me rudely. 'It is strongly
undersaid,' he began, but just at that moment my pursuer
came up, and, with American quickness, took in the
situation. He accosted the policeman in choice bad German.
'I have two licenses,' he said, producing a handful. 'The
Fraulein rides with me.'

I was too much taken aback at so providential an
interposition to contradict this highly imaginative
statement. My highwayman had turned into a protecting
knight-errant of injured innocence. I let the policeman go
his way; then I glanced at my preserver. A very ordinary
modern St. George he looked, with no lance to speak of, and
no steed but a bicycle. Yet his mien was reassuring.

'Good morning, miss,' he began--he called me 'Miss' every
time he addressed me, as though he took me for a barmaid.
'Ex-cuse me, but why did you want to speed her?'

'I thought you were pursuing me,' I answered, a little
tremulous, I will confess, but avid of incident.

'And if I was,' he went on, 'you might have conjectured,
miss, it was for our mutual advantage. A business man don't
go out of his way unless he expects to turn an honest
dollar; and he don't reckon on other folks going out of
theirs,. unless he knows he can put them in the way of
turning an honest dollar with him.'

'That's reasonable,' I answered: for I am a political
economist. 'The benefit should be mutual.' But I wondered