They had one practical point to decide, namely, their first procedure on reaching the city. It was obviously not safe for "Senator Norman" to go directly to the Hotel De Soto. They could not tell what the situation there might be since the kidnapping. It was finally agreed that Rockwell and Merriam should leave the train at Fifty-Third Street and take a taxicab to Rockwell's bachelor apartment on Drexel Boulevard, while Mr. Wayward should go on to the Twelfth Street Station and thence to the hotel to see Aunt Mary. Their next step was to depend on what he learned there. Rockwell was afraid even to telephone from his apartment, for fear the wire to the Senator's suite might be tapped. Merriam was not keen on this arrangement because it evidently postponed his seeing Mollie June and might even prevent his doing so altogether. But this was not an objection which he could raise in the discussion.
At last they were running into the City. Fifty-Third Street was reached, and Rockwell and Merriam shook hands with Mr. Wayward and descended from the private car.
Rockwell's first act in the station was to buy an evening paper. He scanned the sheet anxiously, with Merriam looking over his shoulder. The first page carried a paragraph reporting the abandonment of Senator Norman's down-State speaking tour "on account of a return of his bronchitis." Rockwell had sent no word to this effect to any one in Chicago, but evidently the news had come in from some one or more of the towns to which he had wired cancellations. There were, however, no headlines in regard to the kidnapping of a United States Senator from one of the city's leading hotels and no exposé of their imposture.
"They're still keeping it dark," said Rockwell, with a flash of renewed hope on his haggard face. "We're going to have a chance to make terms."
A moment later they were in a taxicab bound for his apartment. They rode in silence. Merriam wondered if he should see Mollie June again--though just what good that would do him or what he should say to her he could not have told.
"I shall see her once--alone," he said to himself, "whatever happens. I've done enough for them to have a right to demand that."
And on that scene of unhappy farewell--for what else could it be?--his thoughts halted. His mind would go no farther.
The taxicab stopped, and they got out, and Merriam found himself in front of a decidedly imposing apartment building. Rockwell hurried him through a sumptuous entry and into an elevator. They shot up three flights. Then in a hallway Rockwell unlocked a door, and they entered the sitting room of his apartment--a large room in quiet tones, furnished somewhat in the taste of a good men's club.
Merriam sank into a chair.
"Played out?" asked Rockwell, standing over him and speaking in his old manner of matter-of-fact good humour, which had deserted him during that trying day.