Some minutes after the foreman had disappeared in the general direction of Columbus Circle, Pape arose and sauntered toward the park wall. He did not trouble himself further about his steed of raucous breath, steel ribs and rubber hoofs. A “sparrow cop” would happen upon that sooner or later and trundle it back to the Sheepfold garage. The Force could take for granted that its plain-clothe’s borrower had found necessity to abandon it in course of duty. Plainly labeled as a piece of city property by its official number plate, it was safe enough.
He scaled the wall at a calculated point and gave himself completely to the joys of victory when he saw her who had sent him into the arena seated on a shaded bench a short distance above. He joined her. Gallantly as some champion of old he handed her the trophy brought back from the fight—the venerable drain-building permit.
“This is all the authority they had for daylight digging,” he remarked.
“Then—then they haven’t deciphered it?” she breathed with manifest relief, after a moment’s study of the official sheet.
“It? Just what—” he began to ask, then stopped.
Let her tell him if and when she liked. Until and unless, he would continue his rudderless, questionless course.
“Don’t you see,” she was generous enough to add, “if they had solved the cryptogram, they never would have been using this? With their influence they’d have secured a special permit. It may be that one of the gang saw me digging there last night and assumed that I knew more than I really do. There have been signs recently that I was followed by more than—than yourself. That man on the knob last night—Don’t you suppose he had watched me—trailed me—lain in wait for me to take from me whatever I might have dug up?”
They? Their? The gang?
These succinct demands Pape did not put in words although, telepathically, he did not restrain his curiosity. Probably she got something of his vehemence and decided that something was due him. She abstracted her attention completely from the passers-by and gave it to him.
“You were fine, Peter Pape, fine. After dark to-night I’ll come back and finish my search. If I’d stopped to think—except for my desperation, you know—I never should have asked you to put those people out, it was so impossible. But you were inspired with the one-best idea. You handled the expulsion act as artistically as—as an actor in his big scene.”