A word from Leslie to the driver, and away went the carriage down Twenty-eighth Street toward Lexington Avenue. On the avenue there was a carriage ahead, driving at good speed but not at such a headlong rate as their own had been pursuing. Leslie pulled the check-string. "Pass that carriage!" he said to the driver, and the horses sprung out at full speed again. The speed of the carriage ahead did not increase: whoever occupied it probably had no idea of being pursued. Before it had gone two blocks further the pursuers had passed it, and Tom Leslie brought his hand down upon Harding's leg with a force that made him wince, as he saw the number on the near lamp.
"Got them, by the tail of the holy camel!"
It was indeed the same carriage that had left Prince Street less than a quarter of an hour before. They were now ahead of it, and it would not answer either to slacken speed so perceptibly as to let it pass, or to turn back to meet it. Either course might excite apprehension, if there was really anything worth watching in the adventure. A word more to the driver arranged all. They wheeled down Thirty-fourth Street to Third Avenue, drove rapidly around the two blocks to Thirty-sixth, and came out again on Lexington, with the carriage just ahead of them and a fine opportunity to dog it at leisure.
Two or three minutes afterwards the leading carriage wheeled out of Lexington Avenue into East 5— Street, not very far from the Eastern Dispensary, which has lately so well supplied the place of a soldiers' hospital. It was driving slowly, now, and unless some peculiar dodge was intended, Leslie knew that the occupants must be near their destination. To follow them further with the carriage would be both useless and dangerous. Stopping the carriage and telling the driver to wait for them in the avenue half a dozen blocks above, the two friends alighted and followed their quarry on foot. They were close behind the carriage, now, but keeping the sidewalk, and even if observed they might have been supposed to be a couple of late wayfarers plodding home, and not spies as they at that moment felt themselves to be, in however meritorious a cause! About half way between Fourth Avenue and Madison, the carriage stopped before a handsome brown-stone house. "Nothing venture nothing have!" is an old motto that never wears out. Before the rumble of the carriage had fairly stopped or the driver could have had time to turn around, the two friends were over the area railings and under the steps. Not a dignified position, perhaps, nor a pleasant one in which to be caught in the event of a sudden opening of the area door; but other men have risked as much for a much idler curiosity!
Perfect silence under the steps, except two loudly-beating hearts and a little quick breathing. Leslie ventured a look around the corner of the stoop—saw the driver get down and open the door, and the one man and two women alight and go up the steps. For the rest, they were obliged to depend upon the ears. One of the women spoke:
"It will come to-morrow at midnight?"
Harding could feel that Leslie shuddered, and could distinguish his sharp whisper to himself:
"The red woman's voice! I knew I could not be mistaken!"
Then the voice of the man said: "Wait a moment!" and Leslie fancied that he recognized that voice quite as well as the other. Then there was a quick pull of the bell, the sound tinkling far back in the still house. Then came two sharp pulls after the pause of a moment, and then a fourth after another pause. Not until the fourth tinkle had been heard was there any other sound within the house. Then a door was heard to open and shut, and feet were heard in the hall. The man's voice said "All right!" and the carriage drove away. An inner door opened, but the outer one (as the friends could easily distinguish by the sound of the voices) remained closed until some one within asked:
"How many?"