It is doubtful if young Mr. Barnes knew what a policeman’s beat was. Certainly he did not conceive of it as a restricted territory.
He had gone about six blocks at his best stride, eagerly scanning both sides of the avenue before the thought came into his mind that he might be going in the wrong direction and that he might keep on indefinitely to the Staten Island ferry and obtain never a glimpse of the borrowed uniform of Officer 666.
“But I must warn the chap,” he thought fiercely, “or there will be the very deuce and all to pay.”
Whitney slowed down, came to a full stop and was meditatively chewing the head of his cane when an automobile halted at the curb. A head thrust itself out of a window of the limousine and a musical voice asked:
“Why, Mr. Barnes, what are you doing here?”
Whitney Barnes guiltily jumped and barely missed swallowing his cane.
Volplaning to earth, he looked for the source of this dismaying interruption. He recognized with a start one of the past season’s débutantes whose mamma had spread a maze of traps and labyrinths for him––Miss Sybil Hawker-Sponge of New York, Newport, Tuxedo and Lenox.
Before he could even stutter a reply a motor footman had leaped down from the box and opened the door of the limousine. Miss Hawker-Sponge fluttered out, contrived her most winning smile and repeated:
“Why, Mr. Barnes, what are you doing here?”