Part 29 (1/2)

”Have there been any inquiries for them here?”

The woman smiled in obvious relief, and spread out her hands.

”But yes! You spoke truly, Senorita, when you warned me of those who would seek them. In the evening just after you were here last a gentleman--an Americano--came asking for the Senora Reyes. I knew nothing of her.” She drew down her eyelids, significantly. ”Next morning, there came a young man of our country. He said that he was from Mexico, but he lied; the speech of the Basque was on his tongue.

The Senora Reyes was his aunt, and he came to tell her that he had found her lost son, his cousin. He, too, departed. Yesterday it was a boy. He was an amigo, a companero of Jose; he desired to know where he might be found, but he, also, was unsatisfied. We are the Lopez--what have we to do with the Senora Reyes or Jose?”

Her tone of bland candor was inimitable, but it did not eradicate the consciousness of anxiety and unrest in her bearing at first. Nothing more was to be learned from further parley, and Willa presently departed, leaving behind her a substantial roll of banknotes.

Her mind was far from easy, and as she descended the dark steep stairs she came to an abrupt decision. Something was wrong and despite the hirelings of Starr Wiley she must know.

”Dan,” she began when he sprang down to a.s.sist her into the car, ”I don't know how it is to be done, but we have got to lose those trailers. I don't care how long it takes or how many miles we cover doing it, but we must manage to get to Second Place, Brooklyn, without being followed. Do you think you will be able to make it, or shall I try to give them the slip by taking the subway?”

Dan reflected.

”There's more than one in the big car and you'd be trailed sure, Miss.

Better take a chance with me, and I'll get you there safely without them knowing if we ride till morning!”

Then began a strange and devious journey. To Willa, who, aside from her infrequent visits to the cottage on the Parkway, had seen little of New York and its environs save in the beaten path of the conventional social round, it was a revelation. They tore through crooked teeming side-streets whose squalor was veiled in the falling curtain of snow and shot across broad avenues with gleaming vistas of light stretching interminably in either direction, to dash sharply about a corner and off through a lane of canyon-like factories and sweatshop hives. Once they skirted huge railroad yards and twice they circled along the river's edge between towering warehouses, with the tang of salt winds swirling the flakes about them and a forest of tall masts looming up ahead.

Dan Morrissey knew the city as only one can who has grown up practically on its streets and he was following a well-defined route in his mind as he wove back and forth through the myriad threads which held together the vast and varied pattern on the loom which was New York, drawing ever nearer the great bridge. The runabout had been left behind, but the larger car still trailed and the sharp exhaust of the motor-cycle reached their ears tauntingly above the subdued rattle of occasional traffic.

All at once Dan commenced to chuckle and Willa could feel his shoulders shake beside hers.

”What is it?” she demanded with a quick glance at him.

”I've just thought of something, Miss. If Delehanty is on his station now, watch us lose the laddy-buck on the motor-cycle!”

They had reached a corner on lower Broadway, whence the home-going stream of humanity had long since disappeared like ants into the burrow of subway entrances, but where a burly traffic policeman still loomed bulkily in the middle of the thoroughfare.

Dan drew the car up at the curb, leaped out and approached the minion of the law. A short colloquy, and he had returned and the car shot down Broadway. ”You can look back now, Miss,” suggested Dan. Willa turned. The motor-cycle had been halted in mid-pursuit, its rider gesticulating in futile rage and vexation while the obdurant bluecoat held him fast.

”How did you do it, Dan?” Willa asked.

”Delehanty's death on motor-cyclists since one ran him down last summer. I told him this feller was a chauffeur in the same garage as me, and trailing me now on a bet, but that the license on his machine was phony. We'll be there and back before he gets through explaining at the station-house.”

Once across the bridge, Dan led the big car far out to a spa.r.s.ely built-up section of Flatbush and there at last his object was achieved.

A loud report echoed behind them and glancing over her shoulder Willa saw the big car swerve and come to an abrupt halt in the ditch.

”Tire burst!” she announced. ”Luck is with us, Dan!”

”It was, in the shape of some broken gla.s.s!” Her ally retorted grinning. ”I said a prayer myself as we went over it. The way is clear now!”

Second Place was a dull row of somber brick dwellings with prim muslin curtains behind each window pane, and an air of bearing its indubitable respectability self-consciously.

The car halted before a house midway the block, and Willa was up the steps in a flash and pealing the bell.

A swarthy middle-aged woman, with a white ap.r.o.n over her ample silk gown, presented herself and stammeringly bade the girl welcome.