what did he leave for?”
“He’s gone to tell somebody, somewhere, that we’re looking for Caroline Smith. Come on!” He stepped out to the curb and stopped a passing taxi. “Follow that machine and keep a block away from it,” he ordered.
“Bootlegger?” asked the taxi driver cheerily.
“I don’t know, but just drift along behind him till he stops. Can you do that?”
“Watch me!”
And, with Ronicky and Bill Gregg installed in his machine, he started smoothly on the trail.
Straight down the cross street, under the roaring elevated tracks of Second and Third Avenues, they passed, and on First Avenue they turned and darted sharply south for a round dozen blocks, then went due east and came, to a halt after a brief run.
“He’s stopped in Beekman Place,” said the driver, jerking open the door. “If I run in there he’ll see me.”
Ronicky stepped from the machine, paid him and dismissed him with a word of praise for his fine trailing. Then he stepped around the corner.
What he saw was a little street closed at both ends and only two or three blocks long. It had the serene, detached air of a village a thousand miles from any great city, with its grave rows of homely houses standing solemnly face to face. Well to the left, the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge swung its great arch across the river, and it led, Ronicky knew, to Long Island City beyond, but here everything was cupped in the village quiet.
The machine which they had been pursuing was drawn up on the right-hand side of the street, looking south, and, even as Ronicky glanced around the corner, he saw the driver leave his seat, dart up a flight of steps and ring the bell.
Ronicky could not see who opened the door, but, after a moment of talk, the chauffeur from the car they had pursued was allowed to enter. And, as he stepped across the threshold, he drew off his cap with a touch of reverence which seemed totally out of keeping with his character as Ronicky had seen it.
“Bill,” he said to Gregg, “we’ve got something. You seen him go up those steps to that house?”
“Sure.”
Bill Gregg’s eyes were flashing with the excitement. “That house has somebody in it who knows Caroline Smith, and that somebody is excited because we’re hunting for her,” said Bill. “Maybe it holds Caroline herself. Who can tell that? Let’s go see.”
“Wait till that taxi driver goes. If he’d wanted us to know about Caroline he’d of told us. He doesn’t want us to know and he’d maybe take it pretty much to heart if he knew we’d followed him.”
“What he thinks don’t worry me none. I can tend to three like him.”
“Maybe, but you couldn’t handle thirty, and coyotes like him hunt in packs, always. The best fighting pair of coyotes that ever stepped wouldn’t have no chance against a lofer wolf, but no lofer wolf could stand off a dozen or so of the little devils. So keep clear of these little rat-faced gents, Bill. They hunt in crowds.”
Presently they saw the chauffeur coming down the steps. Even at that distance it could be seen that he was smiling broadly, and that he was intensely pleased with himself and the rest of the world.
Starting up his machine, he swung it around dexterously, as only New York taxi drivers can, and sped down the street by the way he had come, passing Gregg and Ronicky, who had flattened themselves against the fence to keep from being seen. They observed that, while he controlled the car with one hand, with the other he was examining the contents of his wallet.
“Money for him!” exclaimed Ronicky, as soon as the car was out of sight around the corner. “This begins to look pretty thick, Bill. Because he goes and tells them that he’s taken us off the trail they not only thank him, but they pay him for it. And, by the face of him, as he went by, they pay him pretty high. Bill, it’s easy to figure that they don’t want any friend near Caroline Smith, and most like they don’t even want us near that house.”
“I only want to go near once,” said Bill Gregg. “I just want to find out if the girl is there.”
“Go break in on ‘em?”
“Break in! Ronicky, that’s burglary!”
“Sure it is.”
“Ill just ask for Caroline Smith at the door.”
“Try it.”
The irony made Bill Gregg stop in the very act of leaving and glance back. But he went on again resolutely and stamped up the steps to the front door of the house.
It was opened to him almost at once by a woman, for Bill’s hat come off. For a moment he was explaining. Then there was a pause in his gestures, as she made the reply. Finally he spoke again, but was cut short by the loud banging of the door.
Bill Gregg drew himself up rigidly and slowly replaced the hat on his head. If a man had turned that trick on him, a .45-caliber slug would have gone crashing through the door in search of him to teach him a Westerner’s opinion of such manners.
Ronicky Doone could not help smiling to himself, as he saw Bill Gregg stump stiffly down the stairs, limping a little on his wounded leg, and come back with a grave dignity to the starting point. He was still crimson to the roots of his hair.
“Let’s start,” he said. “If that happens again I’ll be doing a couple of murders in this here little town and getting myself hung.”
“What happened?”
“An old hag jerked open the door after I rang the bell. I asked her nice and polite if a lady named Caroline Smith was in the house? ‘No,’ says she, ‘and if she was, what’s that to you?’ I told her I’d come a long ways to see Caroline. ‘Then go a long ways back without seeing Caroline,’ says this withered old witch, and she banged the door right in my face. Man, I’m still seeing red. Them words of the old woman were whips, and every one of them sure took off the hide. I used to think that old lady Moore in Martindale was a pretty nasty talker, but this one laid over her a mile. But we’re beat, Ronicky. You couldn’t get by that old woman with a thousand men.”
“Maybe not,” said Ronicky Doone, “but we’re going to try. Did you look across the street and see a sign a while ago?”
“Which side?”
“Side right opposite Caroline’s house.”
“Sure. ‘Room To Rent.’”
“I thought so. Then that’s our room.”
“Eh?”
“That’s our room, partner, and right at the front window over the street one of us is going to keep watch day and night, till we make sure that Caroline Smith don’t live in that house. Is that right?”
“That’s a great idea!” He started away from the fence.
“Wait!” Ronicky caught him by the shoulder and held him back. “We’ll wait till night and then go and get that room. If Caroline is in the house yonder, and they know we’re
