"S-s-sh!" says he, glancin' around cautious. "Please!"
"Oh, sure!" says I. "Trust me. I'm no sieve. But I'm wondering if you'll ever run across her again."
"I—I don't know," says Ernie. "It all seems so vague and queer. I can't recall much of anything except that Louise—— Well, she did show rather a fondness for me, you know; and perhaps, some time or other——"
"Yes," says I, "lightnin' does occasionally strike twice in the same place. But not often, Ernie."
He's a wonder, Ernie is. Seems satisfied to let it go as it stands, without trying to dope anything out. But me, I can't let anybody bat a mystery like that up to me without going through a few Sherlock Holmes motions. So that evening finds me wandering through Forty-fifth Street again at about the same hour. Not that I expected to find the same lovely lady ambushed in a cab. I don't know just what I was looking for.
And then, all of a sudden, I gets my eye on this yellow taxi. It's an odd shade of yellow, something like a pale squash pie; a big, lumbering old bus that had been repainted by some amateur. And I was willing to bet there wasn't another in town just like it. Also it's the one Ernie had stepped into the night before, for there's the same driver wearing the identical square-topped brown derby. Only there's no Louise waiting inside.
They're a shifty bunch, these independents. Some you can hire for a bank robbing job or a little act with gun play in it, and some you can't. This mutt looked like he'd be up to anything. But when I asks him if he remembers the lady in the evening dress he had aboard last night he just looks stupid and shakes his head.
"Oh, it's all right," says I. "No come-back to it."
"Mebby so," says he, "but my big line, son, is forgettin' things."
"Would this help your memory any?" says I, slippin' him a couple of dollars.