Probably Harding, who was rather precise in his ordinary movements, had not gone so fast in ten years. He was around the corner before the last words had fairly left Leslie's mouth—going as if an enraged woman and three lively policemen had been close after him. Leslie stepped across the street again, took a glance at the number on the lamps of the hack as he passed, and then ensconced himself in a deserted doorway very near, to watch what followed. Every moment that Harding was gone seemed an hour. Would they come out and get away, after all, before the coming of the other vehicle? What kept him so long? (He had been gone about half a minute!) Had there been, for once, no carriage in waiting at the livery? or had Harding concluded to go to sleep on the road? And what the deuce did it all mean—the half-dozen persons, and one a woman almost completely stripped, whom he had seen in that moment's glance into that upper chamber? And the red woman!—aye, the red woman!—that bothered Tom Leslie the worst, and as he had himself confessed, frightened him.
At this juncture the door of the house opened, and a man and two women came out. The man, from his stature and general appearance, and especially from his hat, struck Tom as strangely like the tall Virginian whom they had seen two hours before on Broadway. One of the women might be the girl, Kate; and the third—Leslie indulged in another bit of a shudder as he thought that possibly the third might be the red woman. They were all muffled up, however, and Leslie dared not quit his shelter to observe them more nearly. The driver kept his seat on the box. The man opened the door of the carriage, all stepped in, and the carriage whirled away out into the Bowery and up town. There they were, going, gone, and Harding not yet returned with the means of pursuit! Confusion, vexation and every cross-grained word in the language! So thought Leslie, as he dodged out to the Bowery and watched the disappearing carriage. It had not turned off into any one of the cross-streets, and seemed making for one or the other of the forks of the avenues at the Cooper Institute. Half a minute more, however, and it might as well be the proverbial "needle in the hay-stack" for any chance they would have of finding it again.
Hark! yes, there came tearing hoofs round into Prince Street from Crosby, and the lamps of a carriage shivered with the speed at which they were going. The horses were on the run. It was their carriage after all, for nobody else could be in such a hurry. Twenty seconds brought the flying carriage to the corner—a second's pause—a hail from each of the friends—and Leslie was inside with Harding, and the carriage was dashing up the Bowery about as fast as two good horses could run, with Leslie and Harding each peering out of the opened windows at the side, to see if they could catch any glimpse of a carriage ahead.
There is no doubt that the horses attached to the hinder carriage, whatever may have been the opinions of those attached to the one before,—thought that the rate of speed was a little rapid for a hot midnight in June; and certainly one or two pedestrians who came near being run over at the crossings just below the Cooper Institute, had an impression that some rebel prisoner must be running away from Fort Lafayette or some government official trying to stop one. As Harding and Leslie neared that highly respectable but very ugly monument to the profits of iron and glue and the public pride of Mr. Peter Cooper,—of course there arose a question, the carriage being out of sight, which of the two branches it had taken. The Third Avenue being the plainer road, Leslie decided for the Fourth, and with a shout to the driver just before they reached Tompkins Market, the horses' heads were turned in that direction, and away they went up the comparatively quiet avenue.
At the rate they were going they soon overtook a carriage, as they would have overtaken any thing less rapid than a locomotive or a whirlwind. It was lucky that Leslie had taken the precaution to note the number on the hack, as otherwise they would have been at fault after all. As they dashed by the carriage, which was going at good speed, that cosmopolitan saw that the number on the lamps was a wrong one; and so they kept on. Another carriage was passed at the same speed, their horses by this time dripping as if they had been plunged into the river, but the driver of hack No. 2980 going ahead under the influence of a private five dollars and the promise of an extraordinary glass of brandy. At Twenty-eighth Street they jerked the check-string and the driver pulled up. There was nothing in sight, short of the railroad tunnel.
"We have lost them!" said Harding, whose organ of hopefulness was not so large as that of his friend.
"Humph! maybe so!" was Leslie's reply, his eyes peering out of the windows on all sides, meanwhile. "One thing is certain, that I am not going to bed until I find that hack and know where it has been to-night!"
At that moment, with better fortune than two such wild-goose chasers deserved, they saw the lamps of a carriage flash across Twenty-eighth Street, going up Lexington Avenue.
"By George! there they are!" said the sanguine Leslie.
"Maybe so!" was the reply of Harding, echoing the words his friend had used the moment before.