She stood there in the silent dark, thinking feverishly.
CHAPTER XXIV
TWO PLEASANT GENTLEMEN
When Clifford saw Loveman leave the apartment house and cross rapidly to his cab, he waited to see no more. His next move, as he had planned it, was based upon conjecture, and it had to be executed without a lost moment. He ran back to his waiting taxi-cab, gave the chauffeur Loveman’s address, and thrust a ten-dollar bill into the man’s hands.
“Keep the change, and forget the speed laws,” Clifford exclaimed as he sprang in.
Five minutes later the rocking machine turned into Loveman’s street. Save for his own car, the street was empty. Not waiting for the machine to slow down, Clifford called “Beat it!” to the chauffeur, leaped to the curb and walked rapidly into Loveman’s apartment house. At the end of the corridor a negro youth lay loosely a-sprawl and snoring on the telephone switchboard, and the elevator door stood open. The sight reassured Clifford on one point: he had beaten Loveman to his home—that is, if Loveman’s purpose had been to come home.
Noiselessly, Clifford crossed to the stairway beside the elevator and ran up flight after flight, until he came breathlessly to the twelfth floor, the floor above Loveman’s studio apartment. He let himself through a door with a latch-key, and the next moment, sitting in the darkness, he had on the headpiece of a dictagraph whose wires ran down into the lofty studio which Loveman used as his library. Two or three minutes passed—then he heard some one enter below—then he heard a deep, gruff, unmistakable voice:—
“God, Loveman—thought you were never going to show up.”
His conjecture had been correct. There had been planned a prompt conference to follow that night’s all-important undertaking.
“Been held up, Bradley,—everything’s gone wrong!” Loveman’s usual smooth voice was now more like a snarl.
“Gone wrong!” exclaimed Bradley.