Patsy already had left the counter after lighting his cigar, and he passed out only a few yards behind the woman.
“Now, by Jove, if she doesn’t take a taxi, I shall have soft walking,” he said to himself. “Guy Morton, eh? I never heard of him. When I see him, if so lucky, I may possibly know his face.”
Patsy’s wish was granted, in that Cora Cavendish did not take a conveyance. She walked briskly through Forty-fourth Street to Sixth Avenue, then turned north and increased her pace, gliding with a sort of sinuous grace through the throng of pedestrians.
“Gee! she’s in some hurry,” thought Patsy, at a discreet distance behind her. “If she can go to keep a date with the said Morton and return to her apartments in twenty minutes, she cannot be going very far. To some other hotel, perhaps, or some saloon with a side door for the fair sex.”
Patsy had hit the nail very nearly on the head. A few minutes later he saw his quarry enter a popular café in one of the side streets, where she paused and questioned a man seated at a high desk near the door.
She evidently obtained the information she wanted. For, passing directly through the place, Cora entered one of the several private dining rooms in the rear, quickly closing the door.
It was not done so quickly, however, as to prevent Patsy, who had immediately stepped into the front saloon, from getting a momentary glimpse of the interior of the private room.
He saw that the lace-draped window was partly open, that a man answering Nick’s description of Hawley was seated at a damask-covered table, and that on the latter stood a bottle of wine, partly drank, and two glasses. He also saw, nevertheless, that there was no other occupant of the room.
“He’s still waiting for her,” he reasoned. “Waiting for her with an extra glass. That’s the reporter Nick described, as sure as I’m a foot high, and probably Deland himself. I’ll mighty soon find out.”
Patsy turned and found the man at the desk eying him suspiciously, and he took no chance of a subsequent warning being sent to the suspected couple, but immediately seized the bull by the horns. Stepping close to the desk, he displayed his detective badge and said quietly, but in a way he knew would be effective: