The City of Masks Part 35

"Taxi!" he frantically shouted to the doorman. Some one tapped him on the shoulder. He started as if a gun had gone off at his back. It was all up! For once the police were on the spot when--A voice was shouting:

"By thunder, I didn't think it was in you!"

He whirled to face, not the expected bluecoat, but the sallow detective.

"My G.o.d, how you startled me!"

"I'd have bet my last dollar you hadn't the nerve to--ahem! I--I--Say, take a tip from me. Beat it! Don't hang around here waitin' for that girl. That guy in there is beginning to see straight again, and if he was to bust out here and find you--Well, it would be something awful!"

"Get me a taxi, you infernal idiot!" roared the conqueror in flight, addressing the starter.

"Have one here in five minutes, sir," began the taxi starter, grabbing up the telephone.

"Five minutes?" gasped Stuyvie, with a quick glance over his shoulder.

"Oh, Lord! Tell one of those chauffeurs out there I'll give him ten dollars to run me to the Grand Central Station. Hurry up!"

"The Grand Central?" exclaimed the detective. "Great Scott, man, you don't have to beat it clear out of town, you know. What are you going to the Station for?"

"For a taxi, you d.a.m.n' fool," shouted Stuyvie. "Say, who was that man in there?"

"Didn't you know him?"

"Never saw him in my life before,--the blighter. Who is he?"

The detective stared. He opened his mouth to reply, and as suddenly closed it. He, too, knew on which side his bread was precariously b.u.t.tered.

"I don't know," he said.

"Well, the papers will give his name in the morning,--and mine, too, curse them," chattered Stuyvie.

"Don't you think it," said the other promptly. "There won't be a word about it, take it from me. That guy,--whoever he is,--ain't going to have the newspapers say he was knocked down by a pinhead like you."

The insult pa.s.sed unnoticed. Stuyvie was gazing, pop-eyed, at a man who suddenly appeared at the mouth of the canopy, a tall fellow in a dripping raincoat.

The newcomer's eyes were upon him. They were steady, unfriendly eyes. He advanced slowly.

"I sha'n't wait," said Stuyvie, and swiftly pa.s.sed out into the deluge.

No other course was open to him. There was trouble ahead and trouble behind.

Thomas Trotter laughed. The sallow-faced man made a trumpet of his hands and shouted after the departing one:

"Beat it! He's coming!"

The retreating footsteps quickened into a lively clatter. Trotter distinctly heard the sallow-faced man chuckle.

The Marchioness and Jane went home in the big Millidew limousine instead of in a taxi. They left the restaurant soon after the departure of Stuyvesant Smith-Parvis. The pensive-looking stranger from Scotland Yard came out close upon their heels. He was looking for his American guide.

Trotter brought his car up to the awning and grinned broadly as he leaned forward for "orders."

"Home, James," said Lady Jane, loftily.

"Very good, my lady," said Trotter.

The man from Scotland Yard squinted narrowly at the chauffeur's face. He moved a few paces nearer and stared harder. For a long time after the car had rolled away, he stood in the middle of the sidewalk, frowning perplexedly. Then he shook his head and apparently gave it up. He went inside to look for his friend.

The next day, the sallow-faced detective received instructions over the telephone from one who refused to give his name to the operator. He was commanded to keep close watch on the movements of a certain party, and to await further orders.

"I shall be out of town for a week or ten days," explained young Mr.

Smith-Parvis.

"I see," said the sallow-faced man. "Good idea. That guy--" But the receiver at the other end clicked rudely and without ceremony.

Stuyvesant took an afternoon train for Virginia Hot Springs. At the Pennsylvania Station he bought all of the newspapers,--morning, noon and night. There wasn't a line in any one of them about the fracas. He was rather hurt about it. He was beginning to feel proud of his achievement.

By the time the train reached Philadelphia he had worked himself into quite a fury over the way the New York papers suppress things that really ought to be printed. Subsidized, that's what they were. Jolly well bribed. He had given the fellow,--whoever he was,--a well-deserved drubbing, and the world would never hear of it! Miss Emsdale would not hear of it. He very much wished her to hear of it, too. The farther away he got from New York the more active became the conviction that he owed it to himself to go back there and thrash the fellow all over again, as publicly as possible,--in front of the Public Library at four o'clock in the afternoon, while he was about it.

He had been at Hot Springs no longer than forty-eight hours when a long letter came from his mother. She urged him to return to New York as soon as possible. It was imperative that he should be present at a very important dinner she was giving on Friday night. One of the most influential politicians in New York was to be there,--a man whose name was a household word,--and she was sure something splendid would come of it.

"You must not fail me, dear boy," she wrote. "I would not have him miss seeing you for anything in the world. Don't ask me any questions. I can't tell you anything now, but I will say that a great surprise is in store for my darling boy."

Meanwhile the nosy individual from Scotland Yard had not been idle. The fleeting, all too brief glimpse he had had of the good-looking chauffeur in front of Spangler's spurred him to sudden energy in pursuit of what had long since shaped itself as a rather forlorn hope. He got out the photograph of the youngster in the smart uniform of the Guard, and studied it with renewed intensity. Mentally he removed the c.o.c.ky little moustache so prevalent in the Army, and with equal arrogance tried to put one on the smooth-faced chauffeur. He allowed for elapsed time, and the wear and tear of three years knocking about the world, and altered circ.u.mstances, and still the resemblance persisted.

For a matter of ten months he had been seeking the young gentleman who bore such a startling resemblance to the smiling chauffeur. He had traced him to Turkey, into Egypt, down the East Coast of Africa, over to Australia, up to Siam and China and j.a.pan, across the Pacific to British Columbia, thence to the United States, where the trail was completely lost. His quarry had a good year and a half to two years the start of him.

Still, a chap he knew quite well in the Yard, after chasing a man twice around the world, had nabbed him at the end of six years. So much for British perseverance.

Inquiry had failed to produce the slightest enlightenment from the doorman or the starter at Spangler's. He always remembered them as the stupidest a.s.ses he had ever encountered. They didn't recognize the chauffeur, nor the car, nor the ladies; not only were they unable to tell him the number of the car, but they couldn't, for the life of them, approximate the number of ladies. All they seemed to know was that some one had been knocked down by a "swell" who was "hot-footing it" up the street.

His sallow-faced friend, however, had provided him with an encouraging lead. That worthy knew the ladies, but somewhat peevishly explained that it was hardly to be expected that he should know all of the taxi-cab drivers in New York,--and as he had seen them arrive in a taxi-cab it was reasonable to a.s.sume that they had departed in one.

"But it wasn't a taxi-cab," the Scotland Yard man protested. "It was a blinking limousine."

"Then, all I got to say is that they're not the women I mean. If I'd been out here when they left I probably could have put you wise. But I was in there listenin' to what Con McFaddan was sayin' to poor old Spangler. The woman I mean is a dressmaker. She ain't got any more of a limo than I have. Did you notice what they looked like?"

The Scotland Yard man, staring gloomily up the rain-swept street, confessed that he hadn't noticed anything but the chauffeur's face.

"Well, there you are," remarked the sallow-faced man, shrugging his shoulders in a patronizing, almost pitying way.

The Londoner winced.

"I distinctly heard the chauffeur say 'Very good, my lady,'" he said, after a moment. "That was a bit odd, wasn't it, now? You don't have any such things as t.i.tles over 'ere, do you?"

"Sure. Every steamer brings one or two of 'em to our little city."

The Englishman scratched his head. Suddenly his face brightened.

"I remember, after all,--in a vague sort of way, don't you know,--that one of the ladies had white hair. I recall an instant's speculation on my part. I remember looking twice to be sure that it was hair and not a bit of lace thrown--"

"That's the party," exclaimed the sallow-faced man. "Now we're getting somewhere."