"Didn't you think it queer to be paid before you reached your destination?"
"Yes, but the rest was queerer. After I had taken the money—I never refuses money, sir—and was expecting him to get into the hack, he steps up to me again and says in a lower tone than before: 'My wife is very nervous. Drive slow, if you please, and when you reach the place I have named, watch your horses carefully, for if they should move while she is getting out, the shock would throw her into a spasm.' As she had looked very pert and lively, I thought this mighty queer, and I tried to get a peep at his face, but he was too smart for me, and was in the carriage before I could clap my eye on him."
"But you were more fortunate when they got out? You surely saw one or both of them then?"
"No, sir, I didn't. I had to watch the horses' heads, you know. I shouldn't like to be the cause of a young lady having a spasm."
"Do you know in what direction they went?"
"East, I should say. I heard them laughing long after I had whipped up my horses. A queer couple, sir, that puzzled me some, though I should not have thought of them twice if I had not found next day——"
"Well?"
"The gentleman's linen duster and the neat brown gossamer which the lady had worn, lying folded under the two back cushions of my hack; a present for which I was very much obliged to them, but which I was not long allowed to enjoy, for yesterday the police——"
"Well, well, no matter about that. Here is a duster and here is a brown gossamer. Are these the articles you found under your cushions?"
"If you will examine the neck of the lady's gossamer, you can soon tell, sir. There was a small hole in the one I found, as if something had been snipped out of it; the owner's name, most likely."