And what a wonderful girl for his leading lady! What eyes! What hair! What lovely little hands, with the gloves hastily rolled up from the wrist! Why should she be unhappy? He'd like to knock the block off any man who——
Green came to himself with a thrill of happiness: her pretty voice was sounding in exquisite modulations behind him as she asked the waiter for m-more m-marmalade.
In a sort of trance, Green demolished bun after bun. Normally, he loathed the indigestible. After what had seemed to him an interminable length of time, he ventured to turn around again in pretense of calling a waiter.
Her chair was empty!
At first he thought she had disappeared past all hope of recovery; but the next instant he caught sight of her hastening out toward the ticket boxes.
Flinging a five-dollar bill on the table, he hastily invited the waiter to keep the change; sprang to his feet, and turned to seize his overcoat. It[207] was gone from the hook where he had hung it just behind him.
Astonished, he glanced at the disappearing girl, and saw his overcoat over her arm. For a moment he supposed that she had mistaken it for her own ulster, but no! She was wearing her own coat, too.
A cold and sickening sensation assailed the pit of Green's stomach. Was it not a mistake, after all? Was this lovely young girl a professional criminal? Had she or some of her band observed Green coming out of the bank and thrusting a fat wallet into the inside pocket of his overcoat?
He was walking now, as fast as he was thinking, keeping the girl in view amid the throngs passing through the vast rotunda.
When she stopped at a ticket booth he entered the brass railed space behind her.