If you have never been caught in a Paris traffic jam you have never plumbed the nethermost depths of exasperation.
All the taxicabs, trucks, victorias, fiacres, old women, cripples, and unleashed children in the world seemed to have chosen the same precise hour the next morning to gather in the streets leading to the Gare du Nord. At least so it seemed to Dudley Drake sitting on tenter-hooks in the tonneau of a jouncing taxi, alternately reading his watch and praying to the driver for the impossible blessing of more speed. Hours seemed to pass during which the machine proceeded by asthmatic fits and jerks and appeared to be getting nowhere.
A block from the railway station Dudley paid his chauffeur and entrusted his fortune to his long legs. The boat train for Cherbourg was leaving the Gare du Nord within ten precious minutes. By dint of battering-ram tactics Dudley eventually got himself into the station, across the gloomy, high roofed interior, and finally into the rear of
