CHAPTER XIX
WHAT DASHLEIGH SAW.
The cab-driver stared.
“Well, it’s this way, you see,” Bert tarried to explain. “I’m overdue at some Mrs. Whitlock’s—Mrs. Marcellene Whitlock’s, I think—for dinner this evening. Big feed and all that, you understand. I was to have been there at eight sharp, and it’s now hurrying along toward nine. I don’t know where they live—forgot the number—and can’t find it in the directory. The best way, I suppose, is to take them in turn and chase the right one down in that way. Slow process, but I don’t know anything better.”
The driver grinned.
“P’r’aps ’twasn’t Whitlock!” he ventured. “I heard that there was to be a big dinner at Mrs. Warlock’s, on Whitney Avenue, this evening.”
“Warlock? Well, that may be the name. Hanged if I know! Drive me to Mrs. Warlock’s, as fast as you can.”
He tumbled himself and his mandolin into the vehicle, and the driver springing to the box, they were soon rattling away.
There was a “party” at Mrs. Warlock’s; Bert could not doubt that, for when he jumped out in front of the house he heard the unmistakable sounds of merriment and music.
“Wait a minute!” he asked of the driver, and darted up the steps.