All traces of the deck-hand Gavitt, and of the Sonneschein planter-customer having been thus obliterated, there remained only the paying of his bill and the summoning of a cab. Oddly enough, the cab, when it came, proved to be a four-wheeler driven by a little, wizen-faced man whose thin, high-pitched voice was singularly familiar.
"The Hotel Chouteau?—yis, sorr. Will you plaze hand me thim grips? I can't lave me harrses."
The driver's excuse instantly tied the knot of recognition, and the man who had just cremated his former identities swore softly.
"Beg your pardon, sorr; was ye spakin' to me?"
"No; I was merely remarking that the world isn't as big as it might be."
"Faith, then, it's full big enough for a man wid a wife and sivin childer hangin' to um. Get in, sorr, and I'll have you at the Chouteau in t'ree shakes av a dead lamb's tail."
The little cabman was better than his word, but on the short drive to the hotel he found time to work out a small problem, not entirely to his satisfaction, but to at least a partial conclusion.
"'Tis the divil's own self he is, and there's nothing left av him but thim eyes and that scar on his forrud, and his manner of spakin'. But thim I'd swear to if I'd live to be as old as Father M'Guinness—rest his sowl."