“Stop!” cried Miss Smith—but it was to the elevator boy who was whizzing below them in his cage, not to her employer; and she boarded the elevator with the older woman. “I’ll go with you,” she said. There was no vibration in her even tones, although a bright red flickered up in her cheek.
But Rebecca Winter caught savagely at her breath, which was coming fast. “It is not with the running; you needn’t think it, Janet,” she panted sharply, in a second. “It was the sight of his face—so suddenly; I never expected any face would make my heart pump like that again. All of which shows”—she was speaking quite naturally and placidly again—“that women may grow too old for men to make fools of them, but never for children. Come; it was a shabby sort of hack he was in, drawn by two horses with auburn tails. Here’s the office floor.”
Not a word did Janet Smith say; she was not a woman of words in any case. Moreover, the pace which Mrs. Winter struck was too rapid for comments or questions; it swept them both past the palm-shaded patio into the side hall, out on the noisy, dazzling, swaying street. Looking before her, Miss Smith could see the dusty body of a hack a block away. Mrs. Winter had stepped up to a huge crimson motor-car, in the front seat of which lounged the chauffeur, his forehead and eyes hunched under his leather visor. The machine was puffing, with the engine working, ready to leap forward at a touch of the lever.
“Twenty dollars an hour if you let me get in now!” said Mrs. Winter, lightly mounting by his side as she spoke.
“Hey, me? what!” gurgled the chauffeur, plucked out of a half-doze. “Oh, say, beg your pardon, lady, but this is hired, it belongs—”
“I don’t care to whom it belongs, I have to have it,” announced Mrs. Winter calmly. “Whoever hired it can get another. I’ll make it all right. You start on and catch that hack with the auburn-tailed horses—”
“I’ll make it right with your fare!” Miss Smith cut in before the chauffeur could answer. “It’s a case of kidnapping. You catch that cab!” She was standing on the curb, and even as she spoke an elderly man and his wife came out of a shop. They stared from her to the automobile, and in their gaze was a proprietary irritation. This was instantly transfused by a more vivid emotion. The woman looked shocked and compassionate. “Oh, pa!” she gasped, “did you hear that?”
The man was a country banker from Iowa. He had a very quick, keen eye; it flashed. “Case of kidnapping, hey?” snapped he, instantly grasping the character of the speakers and jumping at the situation. “Take the auto, Madam. Get a move on you, Mr. Chauffeur!”
“Oh, I’m moving, all right,” called the chauffeur, as he skilfully dived his lower wheels under the projecting load of a great wagon and obliquely bumped over the edge of a street-car fender, pursued by the motorman’s curses. “I see ’em, lady; I see the red tails; I’ll catch ’em!”
His boast most likely had been made good (since for another block they bore straight on their course) but for an orange-wagon which had been overturned. There was a rush of pursuit of the golden balls from the sidewalk; a policeman came to the rescue of traffic and ordered everything to halt until the cart was righted. The boys and girls in the street chased back to the sidewalk. The episode took barely a couple of minutes, but on the edge of the last minute the cab turned a corner. The motor-car turned the same corner, but saw no guiding oriflamme of waving red horsehair. The cross street next was equally bare. They were obliged to explore two adjacent highways before they came upon the hack again. This time it was in distant perspective, foreshortened to a blur of black and a swish of red. And even as they caught sight of it the horses swung round into profile and turned another corner. In the turn a man wearing a black derby hat stuck his arm and head out of the window in order to give some direction to the driver. Then he turned half around. It was almost as if he looked back at his pursuers; yet this, Mrs. Winter argued, hardly could be, since he had not expected pursuit, and anyhow, the chances were he could not know her by sight.