A car rumbled into the garage. Its colored driver immediately began washing it and Harvey sauntered back into the yard. The number on it was the one printed on his memory.
From somewhere back in his tired brain came the impulse to say,
“I’m a repair man from Gavin’s garage. Mr. Comstock told me to come over and take a look at his car. Said he had it out in the rain last night and it wasn’t working right.”
“Yes, sah; that car certainly has been drove last night. Some of the battery connections got wet.” The chauffeur was glib enough.
“Lights and ignition out of order?” Harvey pretended to examine the car, asking seemingly careless questions and gaining from the negro the information that the car had gone from the jail with Druce to an obscure street far out on the northwest side. The man could not give the number of the house, but said it was one of three in the middle of “a short little street.”
Harvey made the excuse that he must go back to the garage where he was employed to get his tools, and hurried away.
It was growing dark and a wild, stormy rain-wind was blowing when he reached the remote neighborhood described for him by the bondsman’s talkative servant. He was gazing at the three forbidding dwellings standing near the center of the block, trying to make up his mind which to approach first, when he saw Elsie in her long rain-coat come out of the middle house, hesitate a moment, then hurry down the steps into the street.
He slipped into the shadow of a house, his heart thumping.
“Elsie!” he called softly in a voice scarcely above a whisper.
She stopped, startled.