A little feminine sigh came from the other end of the wire. "Oh, dear, it was so stupid of me to say that—to a man!" A pause. Then, in a slightly vexed tone, "Supposing that it is a question of minding one's own business."
"Precisely what I am trying to do," said Indiman, humbly. "It is a settlement that I am proposing."
"I perceive, sir, that I am making myself ridiculous," and the voice sounded cold and inconceivably distant. "I have the honor to wish you a very good-morning." The telephone rang off sharply.
I fancy that the same thought was in both our minds: Could this be the same woman whom we had seen selling her kisses at an East Side bazaar? The very thought was incredible. And remember that we had not heard her voice before. Yet neither of us doubted, even for a moment.
"After all, it was only the one kiss that was actually sold and delivered," said Indiman, half-defiantly. But he need not have defended her to me.
It was getting to be a very pretty problem as it stood, the one obvious probability being that it was the girl herself who stood in danger. What could we do? To discover the nature of the impending peril and, above all, the personnel of the conspirators. And then what? How were we to communicate with or warn the girl?—for, of course, she had called up Indiman from a public pay-station, leaving no clew to her identity or address. Well, there was still the Personal column in the HERALD; it had reached her once and might again.
"I am going down-town to the main office of the Western Union," said Indiman, "and may be away all day. If I shouldn't return by dinner-time, you will carry out the instructions in the message. Exactly, remember—car No. 6, and the best butter—each detail may be important. About nine o'clock should be a good hour."
"I understand," I said, and we parted.
At exactly half after nine that evening I stepped off car No. 6 at the crossing of West Fourth and Eleventh streets. The grocery was on the northwest corner, and I entered without hesitation.
Like many other big cities, New York (even excluding the transpontine suburbs) is a collection of towns and villages rather than a homogeneous municipality. Chelsea and Harlem and the upper West Side—all these are distinct and separate centres of community life. Greenwich Village knows naught of Yorkville, and the East Side Ghetto has no dealings with the inhabitants of the French quarter.