He knew that he had not placed the paper in his pocket, and glanced around with his usual caution to see if any one was watching him. He saw that wonderful pair of gray eyes with the dark lashes—Irish eyes, he called them—watching him over the shoulders of a man a dozen feet away in the crowd. But the moment the woman realized that she was being observed, she disappeared.
"Deuced strange," he muttered to himself, fumbling with the paper, which he had not withdrawn from his pocket. "That girl placed this paper in my pocket. I wonder why. There is something out of the way here, for the paper was not there before she stood beside me."
One less wise than Ted, and not so modest, might have thought that the girl was trying to flirt with him. But to Ted there was something more important and mysterious than that in her actions.
If he read them aright, she had placed the paper in his pocket when she apparently accidentally bumped into him, and had gone away only to come back to see if he had discovered it.
Although he searched the crowd with eager eyes, he did not see her again, and was confident that she had disappeared as soon as she had accomplished her mission, which was to convey some message to him.
Although he was somewhat curious to know what, if anything, was written on the paper, he restrained himself until he could be alone, for he did not know who might be in that crowd looking for just such a move on his part.
Just then Bud brushed his way through the crowd and came up to Ted.
"Them things ain't come yit," he said, in a tone of discontent, "an' me stranded in St. Looey with no more clean shirt than a rabbit."
"You can easily get a clean shirt," said Ted, "but it's not so easy to get a new commission. That's what's worrying me, for there is no telling how soon we may need one."
"Well, let's git out o' this mob, er I'll begin ter beller an' mill, an' if they don't git out o' my way I'll cause sech a stampede thet it'll take ther police all day ter round 'em up ag'in."