Seeing nothing better to do, Pape leisurely descended the stairs. The steps protested stridently as before, but more intelligibly now.
“She doesn’t look it,” shrieked the top one. And: “She doesn’t—doesn’t—doesn’t!” repeated the several next. “But she wouldn’t let you in—in—in,” the hard-tried middle ones. “There’s something queer about it all—something queer—something queer,“ creaked the ground-floor last.
Within the stipulated “few” minutes Jane joined him out on the Colonial portico of long-ago grandeur. Her complete change of costume—the dingy black doffed for a small, smart sailor hat and a gray tweed that did credit to her tailor as well as herself—proclaimed her something of an artist at the alias act. Also did it quash any hope which may have been left in him that the East Side flat-house was a place of temporary sojourn. Evidently she kept a wardrobe there. The man who had greeted her so tenderly last night called the shack “home.” Jane was always going off on these visits to her many woman friends—so Irene had said.
Such deductions halved his attention during the reflexes of handing her into the taxi and instructing the driver regarding the return trip. There pended a somewhat important question. Of this he reminded her by a level glance, his foot ready to leave the running-board and his hand ready to shut the door from the outside.
“I am not such an ingrate as to make you walk,” she answered.
During the cross-town ride there was but one exchange between them.
“Jane”—Pape turned to her daringly, the humor twitches about his mouth defying any serious attempt which she might make to put him in his place—“I have to call you Jane, you see, because it is the only part of your name of which I feel sure.”
As before, at a similar suggestion, she gave him a look of startled resentment. Then, with a faint but very sweet smile——
“Peter,” she bade him, “pray proceed.”
He did. “Should you mind telling me, Jane, whether what you are digging for in the park has any connection with the theft of that something you valued the other night?”