It was good advice - if only Phil had heeded it!
CHAPTER XIV
GETTING lost in Central Park was easy. Phil Harley had done it before; he did it again.
Within fifty yards, Phil needed to regain his sense of direction and turned around to take bearings, only to find the scene quite muddled. Bushes, trees, now intervened, so that the drive was no longer visible.
Looking where he thought Thara’s carriage was, Phil could no longer locate it. It was either out of sight beyond a bush clump or it had moved further along. In either case it wouldn’t help Phil find the fugitive hansom, so he decided to look for the latter.
At that moment, something intervened.
That something manifested itself against the glow from a light which might either represent the drive, a footpath, or anything else that was lighted around Central Park. The thing was a shape of jet blackness, human in a weird sort of way.
It looked like a person cloaked in black, with widespread, menacing arms. It lunged up beyond a shrub clump, made an eccentric sidelong shift, then performed a truly kaleidoscopic disappearance, because changes of color were involved. One instant, the creature turned greenish; the next, it was dyed red. Then it was gone with a fantastic swoop.
Phil suddenly realized the reason for all this. He’d seen the night creature flit in front of a changing traffic light, which was why it took on those fantastic hues. The red glow of the traffic light still persisted, but no longer as a background for the fanciful monstrosity.
The light told where the drive was, but Phil didn’t want the drive. He wanted to find the mysterious hansom, so he blundered off in its probable direction, at the same time preparing to meet the cloaked monster should it cross his path.