CHAPTER XXXVIII
Deaths from the wheeled torpedoes that shoot along the city streets are too monotonously numerous to make a stir in the newspapers unless the victims have some other claim on the public attention.
Gilfoyle had been writing advertisements of other people's wares, but nobody was going to pay for the advertisement of him. The things that he might have become were even more obscure than the things he was. The pity of his taking-off would have had no more record than a few lines of small type, but for one further accident.
The taxicab-driver whose reckless haste had sent him down the wrong side of the street had been spurred on by the reckless haste of his passenger. The pretty Mrs. Twyford had been for years encouraging the reporters to emphasize her social altitude, and had seen that they obtained her photographs at frequent intervals. But on this night she had gone up-town upon one of the few affairs for which she did not wish publicity. She had learned by telephone that her husband had returned to New York unexpectedly, and she was intensely impatient to be at home when he got there.
When her scudding taxicab solved all of Gilfoyle's earthly problems in one fierce erasure she made such efforts to escape from the instantly gathered crowd that she attracted the attention of the policeman who happened to be at the next corner. He proceeded to take the name and addresses of witnesses and principals, and he detained her as an important accessory.
Connery was one of the news-men who had been indebted to Mrs. Twyford for many a half-column of gossip, and he recognized her at once. He was a reporter, first, last, and all the time, and he was very much in need of something to sell.
He was greatly shattered by the annihilation of his friend, but his instinctive journalism led him to control himself long enough to call Mrs. Twyford by name and assure the policeman that she was a lady of high degree who should not be bothered.
Neither the policeman nor Mrs. Twyford thanked him. They were equally rude to him and to each other, Connery thought the incident might interest the night city editor of his paper, and so he telephoned a good story in to the office as soon as he had released himself from the inquisition and had seen an ambulance carry poor Gilfoyle away.
Mrs. Twyford reached home too late, and in such a state of nerves that she made the most unconvincing replies to the cross-examination that ensued. When she saw her name in the paper the next morning her friends also began to make inquiries—and eventually to deny that they were her friends or had ever been.
It was her name in the heavy type that caught the heavy eyes of Jim Dyckman at breakfast the next morning. It was thus that he came upon the fate of Thomas Gilfoyle, whose death had been the cause of all this pother.