“Yes! Right after her! There—she turned east. See her white spats? See her furs? Some queen to be out a night like this. Don’t let her get too far ahead of you. That’s right, Delaney!”
The operative sprang to the curb. He rounded the hood of the taxi. He slouched along the pavement to the corner, waited for the fraction of a minute until a limousine passed, then hurried over the Avenue. He disappeared into the canyon whose walls were towering apartments and whose end was marked by a row of soft arcs across which, snow falling from housetops, sparkled in the night like diamonds beyond price.
The Avenue churned with returning theater-parties and night-hawk cabs. The roar of the city came to the waiting Detective’s ears like a giant turning in his first sleep. The sifting snow sanded against the windows of the taxi. The purring motor missed sparking now and then. It shook the cab as it resumed its revolving with a sputter and a cough in the muffler. The driver huddled deeper in his sheep-skin coat collar. He snored in synchronism with the engine.
Drew rubbed the glass before him and studied the aspect with close-lidded intentness. He marked the shut gates of the Mansion down the Avenue. He saw that the lights from the inner globes had been extinguished. He counted the staring windows. His eyes lowered to the soft rose-glow which streamed out through the shut blinds of the library. Snow was on the slats and sills.
A swift crunch of heavy shoes at the side of the taxi—the turning of the door-lock—the burly form in black that climbed in, announced Delaney.
“All right, Chief!” he said somewhat out of breath. “All right—move over. Here she comes back!”
Drew rubbed a frosted pane with his elbow. A blurred form—close to the sheltering wall of the side street—revealed itself into Loris Stockbridge. She turned the corner. She glanced back over her sabled shoulder. She pressed her gloved hands deep within her muff and almost ran for the iron-grilled gates of the mansion.
“She connected with a blonde lad in olive-drab uniform!” said Delaney. “He gave her something that looked to me like a revolver. Wot d’ye make out-a that, Chief?”