“Exactly—any one—who was downstairs the night you saw the car. Oh, it’s all right; you didn’t deceive me then—I know. That’s not the point. I must know if any one’s around.”
“All right; but I don’t understand a word,” said O’Leary helplessly. “Just what are you driving at?”
But for all answer his companion smiled knowingly, shrugged his shoulders and said:
“You understand? Touch my arm if you see him. Come.”
They crossed Lincoln Square after a careful reconnoitering of the surrounding spaces, and descending briskly on the Arcade, passed along the Broadway front and around the corner to the lower street, going in by the side entrance, past the stuffy halls of the animal fancier. The inner arcade, deserted in the barren calm of Sunday night, showed only the lingering figures of a group of newsboys and the half-lights of the telegraph office.
“All right; that’s enough,” said Dangerfield, looking apparently satisfied. “Mighty decent of you. Thanks.”
“Don’t see that I’ve done anything in particular,” said O’Leary, following him into the elevator, “but at your service any time.”
Nevertheless, mystified as he was, he concealed the details of their trip under an evasive answer when he returned to his room. However, the experience remained fixed in his mind, and he divined that Inga, by now, must have told Dangerfield in detail of his discoveries. The precautions taken to bar the door, the voluntary self-imprisonment, the brooding suspicion in the man himself, had spread an uncanny feeling of suspense in the upper hall, where, from day to day, each awaited some dramatic explanation. How near it was at hand no one, not even King O’Leary, had any suspicion.
On the following night, Madame Probasco gave a party “to meet the spooks,” as Tootles expressed it. Just how it came to take place, or who may have put the suggestion into her mind, was never clearly defined. The fact of Drinkwater’s participation left a certain suspicion in the minds of some, especially considering what happened later. At a quarter before midnight, being the witching hour, they came down, expectant and a little awestruck, to Madame Probasco’s rooms. The black-draped passage, which had an aroma of heavy incense, was faintly revealed by a solitary green lamp, which cast uncanny hues over their faces and caused Pansy to take a desperate clutch of Tootles’ hand.
“I can feel them spirits already,” said Myrtle Popper, with a nervous laugh.