Florence felt the man she held struggle to free himself. But just then two burly policemen, arriving on the scene, relieved her of her task.
Trembling from head to toe, Petite Jeanne had left the wrecked cab and was standing by the curb when the man who had come to their rescue approached with lifted hat.
“I have a car here, a rather good one.” He half apologized for intruding. “Your cab’s smashed. The driver tells me you are bound for your theatre. It would be a pleasure—” Suddenly he stopped and stared with dawning recognition at the little French girl.
“Why, upon my word!” he exclaimed. “It is you! Petite Jeanne! The very person for whom I am looking!” He stripped off a glove to hold out his hand.
Until that time, thinking him only a gallant stranger, Jeanne had taken no notice of this man. Now, after one surprised look, she cried, with the feeling native to her race:
“Preston Wamsley! My very dear friend!”
It was, indeed! Having returned, after a month of travel, to his hotel in New York, and finding there Jeanne’s letter regarding his long lost luggage, this friend of her sea journey had hastened immediately to this city and to Angelo’s studio. There he had received the French girl’s address and had been driving to her home when these strange happenings had arrested his progress.
“Nothing,” he said, with a ring of genuine emotion in his voice, “could give me greater pleasure than to drive you to your theatre. Your friend may come with us. You have an unusual taxi driver. He appears to know the ropes. He will make all necessary reports and see that those rascals are put behind bars where they belong. It was a kidnaping plot beyond a doubt.
“No,” he said a moment later, as Jeanne, after sinking into the cushions of the great car he had employed, started shakily to explain, “you need not tell me a thing to-night. To-morrow will do quite as well. Your nerves have been shaken. And this, the driver assures me, is to be your great night.”
“It is,” Petite Jeanne murmured. Then sitting up quite suddenly, she produced a ticket from her purse. “This,” she said, “is the last one in my private row. You must take it.”