Murk hurried down in the elevator and went from the hotel. He got a cab immediately, and promised that dire things would happen to the chauffeur if he did not get to a certain corner up beside the Park in record time. Jim Farland had given him a badge to be used if he was questioned by a police officer, and he was to say that he was an operative attached to Farland's office.
Murk discharged the taxi at the proper corner, touched match to cigarette, and walked slowly down the street toward the apartment house where Kate Gilbert lived with her father and her maid.
Jim Farland had told him the location of the Gilbert apartment, and Murk saw that the lights in it were burning. It was about time for dinner, he knew.
He went to a drug store on the nearest corner and hurried into a telephone booth. He called the apartment house and asked to be connected with the Gilberts. A woman's hoarse voice answered his call, and he guessed that it was the maid speaking.
"Miss Kate Gilbert there?" Murk asked.
"Who is calling, please?"
"Tell her it is about that Prale affair," Murk replied.
"One moment. I'll call her."
Kate Gilbert's voice came to him over the wire almost immediately.
"Miss Gilbert?" Murk asked. "I was to tell you that——"