She rose. "Yes," said the girl. Then she managed to smile at him. "Of course I'll do my best. I'll go back right now."
He took her arm to the door of the room. "Thank Heaven," he said, "that I have one person in whom I can trust without question—one who needs no bribing or rewards, but works to please me. Good-by, my dear."
He watched her down the hall and then turned and went through room after room to the rear of the house. There he rapped on a door in a peculiar manner. It was opened at once, and Harry Morgan appeared before him.
"A rush job, Harry," he said. "A little shadowing."
Harry jerked his cap lower over his eyes. "Gimme the smell of the trail,
I'm ready," he said.
"Ruth Tolliver has just left the house. Follow her. She'll probably go home. She'll probably talk with Caroline Smith. Find a way of listening. If you hear anything that seems wrong to you—anything about Caroline leaving the house alone, for instance, telephone to me at once. Now go and work, as you never worked for me before."
Chapter Twenty-three
Caroline takes Command
Ruth left the gaming house of Frederic Fernand entirely convinced that she must do as John Mark had told her—work for him as she had never worked before. The determination made her go home to Beekman Place as fast as a taxicab would whirl her along.
It was not until she had climbed to Caroline Smith's room and opened the door that her determination faltered. For there she saw the girl lying on her bed weeping. And it seemed to the poor, bewildered brain of Ruth Tolliver, as if the form of Ronicky Doone, passionate and eager as before, stood at her side and begged her again to send Caroline Smith across the street to a lifelong happiness, and she could do it. Though Mark had ordered the girl to be confined to her room until further commands were given on the subject, no one in the house would think of questioning Ruth Tolliver, if she took the girl downstairs to the street and told her to go on her way.