Tom tore it open, looking first to the signature. It was from Pete. "I have got a bunch of the fellows in the hall over the saloon at—Third Avenue," read the awkward scramble of words. "On the third floor. Can't you come in and help me with the spieling?"
At another time Tom might have wondered at this note: how Pete had come to be in a hall with a crowd of men, how Pete had learned where he was. But now the note did not raise a doubt in his fevered brain.
He folded the note, and put it into a pocket. "I've got some work to do yet to-night," he explained, and he took up his hat. It was an unusually warm evening for the first of April and he had worn no overcoat.
"You must come again soon," she said a few moments later, as he was leaving. Tom had nothing to say; he could not tell her the truth—that he expected never to see her again. And so he left her, awkwardly, without parting word of any kind. At the foot of the stairs he paused and looked up at her door, at the head of the first flight, and he looked for a long, long space before he stepped forth into the night.
A little round man stood bareheaded on the stoop; Petersen was pacing slowly to and fro on the sidewalk. The little man seized Tom by the arm. "Won't you send a policeman, please," he asked excitedly, in an inconsequential voice, such as belongs properly to the husband of a boarding-house mistress.
"That man there has been walking just so, back and forth, for the last two hours. From the way he keeps looking up at the house it is certain he is contemplating some nefarious act of burglary."
"I'll do better than send a cop," said Tom. "I'll take him away myself."
He went down the steps, took Petersen's arm and started off with him. "Thank you exceedingly, sir!" called out the little man.
They took an Eighty-sixth Street cross-town car to Third Avenue, and after five minutes' riding southward Tom, keeping watch from the end of the car, spied a number near to the one for which he was searching. They got out and easily found the place designated in Pete's note. It was that great rarity, a saloon in the middle of a New York block. The windows of the second floor were dark; a soft glow came through those of the floor above.