"No."
"Good! Then he'll have to go back to the hotel for it. We have a line on him now. You needn't wait. Come on down to the yard. I want to borrow your cab for awhile."
In his room Greg wrote to Amy:
"Important developments. Dare not trust them to paper. We have found a friend. It is to Washington that F. goes this afternoon. He hopes to see the President to-morrow. I have learned that he is now carrying the l.b.b. on his person, and I'm going to put it up to you to get it. Here is my plan. I will send him this telegram timed to reach him just before he leaves his hotel for the train: 'Must see you for a few minutes before you leave town. Come to the apartment. Amy.' I am depending on you to find an excuse for telegraphing him, and to secure what we are after if you are able. You will need a similar book as a substitute, and I have sent you one through the hall boy, Frank. Perhaps I am asking the impossible, but it was the best plan I could think of. I was handicapped by not being able to talk things over with you. Anyhow, I know you'll do your best. If you fail, don't lose heart, for I'll be there to have a try, and after me there is a third in reserve. Frank has told me that your apartment is on the eighth or next to the top floor, and that the window of your own room is the third from the corner on the river side. I shall be watching that window while F. is with you. If you get the l.b.b. from him hang something white out of that window, and I'll know everything is all right. If I have luck F. will be riding in my cab, but in any case I'll be hard on his trail.
"Greg."
When Pa Simmons came in with his cab this note was slipped in the usual place behind the back seat, and Hickey was dispatched up-town in the Pack-Arrow to take the ladies home from the theater. Pa Simmons enjoyed a well-earned rest.
Meanwhile in the little hall-room, Mario Estuban was practicing the art of disguise on Greg. To begin with they borrowed the outer wear of Pa Simmons entire. Under ordinary circumstances this would have been disguise enough, but as Greg had been somewhat similarly attired on the night he first drove de Socotra around town, they had to go further. Estuban knew better than to attempt the impossible; he could not have made an old man out of the smooth-faced Greg; at least not one that would have stood scrutiny under the light of day. But with a touch of paint he made his eyes red-rimmed and bleary, and put on a pair of cheap spectacles. A clay-colored pigment rubbed into his cheeks made them look hollow and unwholesome; a ragged mustache, and a lank lock of hair sticking down from under the peak of his cap completed the picture. As a last touch of realism, in the yard below Greg grimed his hands and blackened his nails. His own mother would not have recognized him.
"Holy Smoke!" cried Pa Simmons; "looks like he was born in an owl taxi and never seen the light of the sun since!"
Meanwhile Pa Simmons had been looking over the flivver, giving her a little grease here and there, and tightening up a nut or two. With Blossom's help he succeeded in modifying the list to starboard that was her most characteristic peculiarity. In case de Socotra might have remarked her license number on a previous occasion they changed plates for to-night with Blossom's car.
Greg took the wheel, and Blossom cranked her. Bessie waved good-by from the kitchen doorway. All knew that a crisis in the affairs of Greg and Amy was due this night. After the customary fusillade of backfires while she was warming up the flivver moved out of the yard.