Had the two gone off together?
If so, why should she choose a companion of his type?
If not, then what could have formed the motive for the man's abrupt flight from the scene?
And what should be done with the motor-car, thus abandoned to his care?
A quick suspicion that the car had been stolen came to Garrison's mind. Nevertheless it was always possible that Dorothy had urged the driver to convey her out of the crowd, and that the driver had finally returned to get his car, and found it gone; but this, for many reasons, seemed unlikely.
Dorothy had shown her fear in her last startled question: "Jerold, you don't suspect me?" She might have fled in some sort of fear after that. But the driver—what was it that had caused him also to vanish at a time so unexpected?
Garrison found himself obliged to give it up. He could think of nothing to do with the car but to take it to the stand where he had hired it in the morning. The chauffeur might, by chance, appear and claim his property. Uneasy, with the thing thus left upon his hands, and quite unwilling to be "caught with the goods," Garrison was swiftly growing more and more exasperated.
He knew he could not roll the car to the stand and simply abandon it there, for anyone so inclined to steal; he objected to reporting it "found" in this peculiar manner at any police headquarters, for he could not be sure it had been stolen, and he himself might be suspected.
Having hired the car in crowded Times Square, near his Forty-fourth Street rooms, he ran it up along Broadway with the thought of awaiting the driver.
The traffic was congested with surface cars, heavy trucks, other motors, and carriages. His whole attention was riveted on the task in hand. Driving a car in the streets of New York ceases to be enjoyment, very promptly. The clutch was in and out continuously. He crept here, he speeded up to the limit for a space of a few city blocks, and crept again.