“It lets you out, doesn't it?” inquired John Bruce pleasantly. “Now let's see you earn it.”
“I'll earn it!” said the chauffeur with unction. “You leave it to me, boss!”
The quarry, in the shape of the traveling pawn shop, directed its way into the heart of the East Side. Presently it turned into a hiving, narrow street, where hawkers with their push-carts in the light of flaring, spitting gasoline banjoes were doing a thriving business. The two cars went more slowly now. There was very little room. The taxi almost upset a fish vendor's wheeled emporium. The vendor was eloquent—fervently so. But the chauffeur's eyes, after an impersonal and indifferent glance at the other, returned to the car ahead. The taxi continued on its way, trailing fifty yards in the rear of the traveling pawn-shop.
At the end of the block the car ahead turned the corner. As the taxi, in turn, rounded the corner, John Bruce saw that the traveling pawn-shop was drawn up before a small building that was nested in between two tenements. The blood quickened in his pulse. The girl had alighted, and was entering the small building.
“Hit it up a little to the next corner, turn it, and let me off there,” directed John Bruce.
“I get you!” said the chauffeur.
The taxi swept past the car at the curb. Another minute and it had swung the next corner, and was slowing down. John Bruce jumped to the ground before the taxi stopped.
“Good-night!” he called to the chauffeur.
He waved his hand debonairly at the scowling, whiskered visage that was watching him from the interior of the cab, and hurriedly retraced his way back around the corner.
The traveling pawn-shop had turned and was driving away. John Bruce moderated his pace, and sauntered on along the street. He smiled half grimly, half contentedly to himself. The “trip to Persia” had led him a little farther afield than Monsieur Henri de Lavergne had perhaps counted on—or than he, John Bruce, himself had, either! But he knew now where the most glorious woman he had ever seen in his life lived, or, at least, was to be found again. No, it wasn't the moon! To him, she was exactly that. And he had not seen her for the last time, either! That was what he was here for, though he wasn't so mad as to risk, or, rather, invite an affront to begin with by so bald an act as to go to the front door, say, and ring the bell—which would be tantamount to informing her that he had—er—played the detective from the moment he had left her in the car. To-morrow, perhaps, or the next day, or whenever fate saw fit to be in a kindly mood, a meeting that possessed all the hall-marks of being quite inadvertent offered him high hopes. Later, if fate still were kind, he would tell her that he had followed her, and what she would be thoroughly justified in misconstruing now, she might then accept as the tribute to her that he meant it to be—when she knew him better.