"You amazing boy!" I muttered. "But are you really sure?"
"Sure I'm sure!" he crowed. "I think it's nothing to be a detective. I believe I'd make a good one," he bragged.
"Brag, you young devil," I thought indulgently, but I made no audible reply and merely made him walk faster.
He was leading me into Twenty-ninth Street beyond Brentano's and to my amazement I found myself at the well-remembered door of Andrews' bookshop.
"Here!" I cried in stupefaction. He nodded, grinning as though he expected an oration of praise for his acumen then and there. He did not get it. I rushed in wildly, like a mad man, into those silent precincts where so often I had passed blissfully silent hours. Who would desire a garish light in this pleasant temple? For a moment I seemed to be in utter darkness.
"Kind of dark," murmured Randolph, "but I spotted her."
On a sudden my dilated eyes encountered two human beings simultaneously in their line of vision. Andrews was standing in dignity in the middle of his shop like a monarch about to receive royalty, and behind him, at a desk in the rear, a girl was bending over some writing, an electric light illumining her fair head.
The girl—yes!—It was Alicia!
I felt the effect of a sharp blow over the heart and, brushing the astonished Andrews aside, I made a crazy leap toward her.
"Why, Mr. Randolph Byrd!" began Andrews. "Haven't seen you—"