"Let him go. I can nail him, by Jove, at any time," thought Patsy, now grim and frowning. "It’s up to me to look after the woman."
Mullen then was turning the wagon, and in another moment, he drove away through the diverging road with his ill-favored companion—and his senseless burden.
Patsy Garvan did not return to get the motor cycle. He knew it would be of no advantage in trailing a slow-moving wagon over a rough road. He stole down to the edge of the woods, gave Mullen a lead of something like fifty yards, and then he proceeded to follow him.
"The rear flap being down, the rascals cannot discover me unless they lean out and look back," he said to himself. "I’ll fool them in that case, even, by hugging the side of the road. If they see me, or give me the slip, by Jove, they shall have a medal."
There was one contingency, however, on which Patsy did not figure, and which was too remote to have appealed to the most farsighted of detectives.
The taxicab was returning, was speeding toward the city. It passed the crossroad several minutes after the wagon and its stealthy pursuer had departed. It sped on around the bend in the road—and the chauffeur then brought it to a quick stop.
The man within had undergone a decided change. His gray hair, his pointed beard, his gold-bowed spectacles, all had disappeared. Instead of the refined, venerable countenance that had deceived Patsy Garvan, even, there now appeared the malignant, hard-featured white face of Gaston Goulard.
"What is it, Fallon?" he cried, starting up from his seat. "Why have you stopped here?"
The chauffeur pointed to one side of the road.
"That caught my eye," he replied, with an expressive cant of his head. "It doesn’t look good to me."