“It’s not sneak-thieves they’d be, Miss Foljambe, and you goin’ to call up the police?” the maid asked with natural emotion.
“No, no, Katrina. They will do no harm. But I cannot stop to see them. It is a matter of important business for me to attend to. Something I have found out that I must see my father about, without delay. Mind, you are on no account to give these men, if they ask for it, Mr. Foljambe’s address downtown.”
“Trust me, miss,” said the woman, importantly. “They’d never be gettin’ me to let on where they’d find the master, poor gentleman, after all the troubles he’s had already.”
Olive, considering every moment’s delay of the men a clear gain, and reckless of the evident belief of her honest handmaiden that she was going to warn her father to flee from the myrmidons of justice, hurried out of the front door.
Katrina, anxious to fulfill the trust imposed in her, tarried inconceivably long; when Ramirez, his patience exhausted, rang her up for the fourth or fifth time, the woman sauntered into the room wearing an air of defiance blended with cunning. Between Ramirez’s scant supply of colloquial English and Katrina’s voluble mystifications the two men were fairly routed. The Mexican, putting his papers upon the table, finally beat a retreat.
But he reckoned without his enemy.
“Maybe it’s me you think would be serving yer dirty summonses upon the master!” cried she, as, exploding with wrath, she picked up the envelope and thrust it back on him.
“Come away, Ramirez; the creature is certainly mad,” said the other, nervously. To his mind this delay about trivialities, when he had a fortune in his grasp, was insanity on Ramirez’s part as well.
Fleet of foot and full of courage, Olive sped upon her way. Reaching the nearest station of the elevated railway she boarded a car and fell into a seat, looking back in actual fear of finding herself overtaken by the two Mexicans whom she had eluded. After all, was it not a will-o’-the-wisp she was pursuing? As it often happened to her in acting upon impulse, the first cool moment—though that did not come until the train was well on the way downtown—brought its pangs of self-distrust.