“You hold that woman!” demanded Ottenheimer, husky with rage. “You hold that woman, until I examine these premises!”
The young woman, obviously, and also quite naturally, objected to being held. There was a moment of puzzled silence, and then a murmur of disapproval from the crowd, for about the carefully gloved girl in the black street-gown and plumed hat clung that nameless touch of birth and bearing which marked her as a person who would be more at home in a limousine than in a wind-swept doorway.
“The lady, of course, will wait!” quietly but deliberately suggested the black-hatted man with the suit-case, looking casually in over the circling crowd of heads.
The sergeant turned, sharply, glaring out his sudden irritability.
“Now, who asked you to butt in on this?” he demanded, as he impatiently elbowed the pressing crowd further out into a wider circle.
“I merely suggested that the lady wait,” repeated the man in the black hat, as unperturbed as before.
“Of course, officer, I shall wait, willingly,” said the girl, hurriedly, in her equally confident, low-noted rich contralto. She drew her skirts about her, femininely, merely asking that the shop-owner might make his search as quickly as possible.
Ottenheimer and the doubtful-minded sergeant disappeared into the gloom of the midnight store. As the whole floor flowered into sudden electric luminousness, Durkin thanked his stars that he had had sense enough to leave the lighting wires intact.
“Everything’s all right; you may go, miss,” said the sergeant, two minutes later. “I guess old Isaac’s had an early nightmare!” And the dispersing crowd laughed sympathetically.
The woman stepped into the motor-cab, and turned toward Broadway.