“A brown-haired boy in a gray suit with a blue cravat—you know he was in your cab. And how do you know it was a real policeman?”
“Or he wasn’t helping on the deviltry if it was?” sneered the chauffeur, who had now become a full-fledged partizan. “Ain’t you lived in this burg long enough to find out how to make a little mazuma on the side? You’re too good for ’Frisco. Heaven is your home, my Christian friend.”
“Cut it out!” retorted the man. “I guess I know how to find my way round as well as the next man—”
“Certainly you do,” soothed Mrs. Winter, who was fingering a crisp new five-dollar bank-note, “and you are no kidnapper, either; you made no bargain with those men—”
“Sure I didn’t,” agreed the hackman, “nor I ain’t standin’ for kidnapping, neither. Why, I got kids of my own, and my woman she’d broom me outer the house if I was to do them games. Say, I’ll tell you all I knows. They got off, them three, at that there corner, and I was to drive fast ’s I could three blocks ahead and then git home any old way. And that’s God’s truth, I—”
“You didn’t see where they went?” Mrs. Winter was quietly insistent.
“No, I didn’t. I guess I was a dumb fool not ter notice, but they paid me well, and I’d a bad thirst, and I was hiking to a place I know for beer; and that’s—”
“Did the boy seem willing?”
“He didn’t do no kicking as I seen.”
A few more questions revealed that the man had unpacked his full kit of information. He had never seen either of the men before. The gentleman—yes, he was sure he was a gentleman; he wasn’t no swell confidence guy; he was the regular thing—gentleman engaged him to take a party to the Chinese quarter; he’d tell where to stop; didn’t need a guide; only wanted to make a few purchases, he said, and he knew where the things was; yes, ma’am, that was all; only down there on Market Street, or maybe—why, somewhere near by—he stuck his head out and told him to turn the corner, and then he kept telling him to turn corners, until finally he told him to stop and they got out.