"And it's something that'll have to be paid for, and well paid for," declaimed our silvery-haired old friend as he stowed away his cotton handkerchief and took up his slightly triumphant position in that Nile-green roadster.
It was not so much this statement, I think, as the crushed and hopeless look in Mary Lockwood's eyes that prompted me to lean in across the car-door and meet the gaze of those eyes as they stared so unseeingly down at me.
"I wish you'd let me go with you," I begged, putting my pride in my pocket.
"What good would that do?" she demanded, with a touch of bitterness in her voice. Her foot, I could see, was already pressing down on the starter-knob.
"I might be able to help you," I rather inadequately ventured. Even as I spoke, however, I caught sight of the blue-clad figure of a patrolman pushing his way through the crowd along the curb. I imagine that Mary also caught sight of that figure, for a shadow passed across her face and the pulse of the engine increased to a drone.
"I can't wait," she said in a sort of guilty gasp. "This girl needs help. And she needs it quickly."
Unconsciously my eyes fell to the other girl sitting back so limply in the padded seat. She was, clearly, coming round again. But as she drifted past my line of vision with the movement of the car I made a trivial and yet a slightly perplexing discovery. I noticed that the relaxed hand posed so impassively along the door-top bore a distinct yellow stain between the tips of the first and second fingers. That yellow stain, I knew, was customarily brought about by the use of cigarettes. It was a mark peculiar to the habitual smoker. Yet the meek and drab-colored figure that I had lifted into that car-seat could scarcely be accepted as a consumer of "coffin-nails." It left a wrinkle which the iron of Reason found hard to eradicate.
It left me squinting after that departing roadster, in fact, with something more than perplexity nibbling at my heart. I was oppressed by a feeling of undefined conspiracies weaving themselves about the tragic-eyed girl in the Nile-green car. And a sudden ache to follow after that girl, to stand between her and certain activities which she could never comprehend, took possession of me.
Any such pursuit, however, was not as easy as it promised. For I first had to explain to that inquiring patrolman that the accident had been a trivial one, that I hadn't even bothered about taking the license-number of the car, and that I could be found at my home in Gramercy Square in case any further information might be deemed necessary. Then, once clear of the neighborhood, I hesitated between two possible courses. One was to get in touch with Mary's father over the phone, with John Lockwood. The other was to hurry down to Police Headquarters and talk things over with my good friend Lieutenant Belton. But either movement, I remembered, would have stood distasteful to Mary herself. It meant publicity, and publicity was one thing to be avoided. So I solved the problem by taking an altogether different tack. I did what deep down in my heart I had been wanting to do all along. I hailed a passing taxicab, hopped in, and made straight for that hinterland district of Brooklyn where Crotty had described his home as standing.
I didn't drive directly to that home, but dismissed my driver at a near-by corner and approached the house on foot. There was no longer any Nile-green car in sight. And the house itself, I noticed, was a distinctly unattractive-looking one, a shabby one, even a sordid one. I stood in the shadow of the side-entrance to one of those gilt-lettered corner-saloons which loom like aromatic oases out of man's most dismal Saharas, studying that altogether repellent house-front. And as I stood there making careful note of its minutest characteristics a figure came briskly down its broken sandstone steps.