“I followed her out of the cabin, and walked up and down alone in the moonlight, wondering if I had done right. At the wharf, I fully intended to risk everything and inform on her, then cable to the Cicelys. But she must have suspected something like that—my stewardess had already told me there were two Treasury Department detectives on board—and got her innings first. For I found myself quietly taken in charge, and my luggage gone over with a microscope—to say nothing of the gentle old lady who massaged me so apologetically from head to foot, and seemed a bit put out to find that I had nothing more dutiable than an extra pair of French gloves.”
“Had you expected this beforehand?” interposed Durkin.
“Yes, the stewardess had told me there was trouble impending—that’s what made me afraid about the Blue Pear. Just as I got safely through Customs, though, I caught sight of the yellow hag despatching her maid and luggage home in a taxi-cab, while she herself sailed away in another,—I felt so sure she was going straight to her husband’s store, Isaac Ottenheimer & Company, the jeweller and diamond man on Fifth Avenue, you know, that I scrambled into a taxi and told the driver to follow my friend to Ottenheimer’s. When we pulled up there, I drew the back curtains down and watched through a quarter-inch crack. The woman came out again, looking very relieved and triumphant. And that’s the whole story—only,—”
She did not finish the sentence, but looked at Durkin, who was slowly and dubiously rubbing his hands together, with the old, weary, half-careless look all gone from his studious face.
He glanced back at the woman beside him admiringly, lost himself in thought for a moment, and then laughed outright.
“You’re a dare-devil, Frank, if there ever was one!” he cried; then he suddenly grew serious once more.
“No, it’s not daring,” she answered him. “The true name of it is cowardice!”
CHAPTER IX
Four hours later, in that shabby little oyster-house often spoken of as “The Café of Failures,” lying less than a stone’s throw from the shabbiest corner of Washington Square, Frances Candler met by appointment a stooped and somewhat sickly-looking workman carrying a small bag of tools. This strange couple sought out a little table in one of the odorous alcoves of the oyster-house, and, over an unexpectedly generous dinner, talked at great length and in low tones, screened from the rest of the room.
“You say it’s a Brandon & Stark eight-ton vault; but can’t you give me something more definite than that to work on?” the man was asking of the girl.