He covered about three blocks without pause.
A second and far more sensational interruption came from a side street, and again of the feminine gender.
It was a tall, weird looking figure wound in a black shawl and it bumped squarely into Whitney Barnes and brought him up sharply, spinning on one foot.
Before he stopped spinning he felt himself seized by the arm.
Without warning a bundle was thrust into his arms and he had to clutch it. In another instant the weird 182 figure had fled up the avenue, turned a corner and vanished.
Instantly the bundle that Whitney Barnes held awkwardly and painfully, as if it were a firebrand, emitted an anguished wail.
If that wasn’t a pretty pickle for Whitney Barnes! His cane had clattered to the pavement and he did not dare stoop to pick it up. The anguish from the bundle he held increased terrifically in volume. He could feel beads of perspiration running down his face.
What in desperation was he going to do with that awful bundle? He knew intuitively that the tall, shawled figure would never return.
“My God!” he cried, “I’ll be arrested as the father of it, and what will Sadie say to that?”
It was no wonder that the son and heir of Old Grim Barnes sweated. It wasn’t perspiration. One doesn’t perspire in such awful straits––one sweats, like a navvy.