"Nothing," said Hickey. "I done just what you said. The three ladies come out of the apartment house together. I carried 'em from one store to another shopping. I caught the little girl looking at me funny-like once or twice, but I never let anything on. When I took 'em back home, I knocked off twenty per cent as you said, and the old lady fell for it like a baby. She engaged me to call for 'em again at two thirty to take them to a concert at Harmony Hall."
"Good!" said Greg. "I'll write an answer to this while you're eating. Get a good dinner, Hickey."
Hickey grinned slyly, and gave the windshield a wipe. As Greg walked away he murmured to himself: "Cupid's messenger, that's me!"
Greg sat at his table biting his pen. It was not that he had nothing to say but too much. His heart was charged with enough matter to fill a quire—but there was that damned Castilian! He dared not let himself go until the other was explained. He made a mighty effort to be merely friendly as she had been—warmer feelings only broke through once or twice as will be seen.
"Certainly we must meet. It is too dangerous to commit things to paper. But I know so little of the circumstances surrounding you that I must leave the arrangements to you. All I can say is, rely on me absolutely—for anything. How weak that sounds! Please don't thank me. What I have done is nothing. It was just an adventure. I shall not be satisfied until you make some real demands on me. I am making friends for us. In case of need you can depend on the driver. Why do you stay where you are if you are surrounded by enemies? I have read your letter a dozen times already, trying to guess what is hidden between the lines. Not what I'd like to find there, I'm afraid. Please don't insist so hard on my being your friend. It makes me savage. Find some way to let me see you. This uncertainty is horrible. I can do nothing but walk the streets. I will see that a certain party is watched. I hope you wrote to me during lunch time, but I don't suppose you did. I will look while the concert is going on.
"Greg."
It must not be supposed that this was arrived at in a single draft. Greg was still writing when Hickey called up to him that it was time to start, whereupon he finished in a hurry and carried it down to its hiding-place. To Hickey he said:
"I suppose they'll want you to carry them home from the concert. While it's going on you can hang around and pick up any business that offers. But first of all after you have dropped them at the hall meet me at the corner of Sixth and Forty-third so that I can see if she left anything for me on the way down."
Hickey drove out of the yard with the sly grin that provoked Greg, or half provoked him, for at the same time he was well assured that he was faithfully served in Hickey.
Greg looked around the taxi-yard. Three of the cabs were in, the owners presumably sleeping inside. Greg peeped through the windows considering which one would best suit his purpose; the morose Blossom, honest, thick-witted Bull Tandy, or old Pa Simmons. He decided on the latter; Pa Simmons, red and white as a snow-apple, was so indubitably the cabman, no one would ever suspect him of acting in another capacity. Pa Simmons was never seen without his cabman's overcoat; he seemed atrophied from the waist down, and one guessed that he had not walked more than a hundred yards at a time in thirty years. In imagination he still dwelt fondly on the days when he had driven a gentleman's private hansom; now his vehicle was an antique Pack-Arrow that still retained a faded air of luxury in its dim enamel and worn upholstery.