“I know just how you feel,” Sandy assured the man in the front seat. “I have the same trouble myself.” But the laughter was out of his voice before he stopped speaking. There was a menacing quality in the persistence of those lights behind them.
As they neared Fourteenth Street the traffic began to get heavier. Soon the cab driver was able to swing in and out of the lanes of cars in a series of swift maneuvers that forced Barrack’s car to drop behind.
“That’ll hold him,” the driver said with satisfaction. “He’s pocketed now!”
“But something tells me he won’t stay pocketed,” Sandy murmured. “Even if we really lose him he could catch up with us later at your father’s apartment.”
“And if he arrives there, complete with gun, to ask what we were doing on the barge,” Ken said, “what do we tell him? That we were just out for a moonlight stroll along the river?”
“We ask him what he was doing there.”
“And of course he’d tell us,” Ken said sarcastically.
“Of course.” Sandy laughed shortly. “Everything about him so far has been absolutely straightforward—the way he came to your father’s apartment, the way he told us he didn’t know Grace, the way he left that package for Grace to pick up—” He broke off angrily. “I’m certainly beginning to be mighty curious about that man. But I don’t see how we can learn much more about him, now that he’s got us spotted. If we turn up in his way again—”
“I’ve got an idea!” Ken leaned forward to speak to the driver. “We changed our minds. Take us to the Pennsylvania Station instead.”
“What? Penn Station?” The driver glanced around in surprise. “But I thought you were in such a hurry to get to Radio City.”