"Mr. Grant, you're Irish!" Dixie laughed up at him. Grant smiled again.
"I only wish I were, so I could say the things I'd like to say in the way I'd like to say them. But come now, Mr. Von Lertz, you're only joking about leaving. Why it's only midnight."
"Midnight?" Von Lertz started. "Then we must go. It's imperative. That is—"
And while he hesitated and explained, a taxi had driven up outside, at the little triangle which divides Broadway at 72nd Street. From the darkness within, a high cheeked, raw-boned man had started forward, a grip in his hand, only to be halted by a cowering individual who shot forth from a bench at the sidewalk.
"Back in that cab!" he ordered in a whisper. The raw-boned bomb maker started.
"Why—?"
"Don't ask any questions. Back in that cab!"
"But I've got the bomb! Von Lertz said everything would be ready for me. I—"
"Everything is ready—but in a way that we didn't look for," answered the spy on the sidewalk. "Look!"
Quickly and surreptitiously, he pointed upward. Where the flaring sign of the Ansonia Hotel blazed out upon the night, was silhouetted the figure of a man. Ten feet away was another—and another—and another. Down on the sidewalk, a solid cordon of police in uniform was drawn about the building. Not a person could approach without being seen—the guarding arm of the police was absolute.