"Promise me one thing," I said. "That you'll send me word if you want me."
"I promise," she answered quietly, "but I shall never have to keep that promise."
As I went out of the gate, Doctor Reid was coming in, and stopped to speak to me. His companion stood meanwhile some distance away; but it was not too dark for me to recognize the big man with the shrill precision of speech whom I had seen him bring secretly to the house before.
I set out the next morning in a humor of suspicious disillusion, all my quixotism turned sour under the dry sun. Put it how I would, I was playing the part of a spy: if Carucci himself was no better, the honest Irish eyes of his wife made me vaguely ashamed of my task. Having nevertheless undertaken it, I must put it through as well as might be. To follow the pair about would be futile, since I must presently be seen and recognized; but I conceived that merely by making sure of them at intervals during the next forty-eight hours I should be fulfilling my mission. I saw them safely on the train, and established myself in another car; and when we reached the Grand Central, I made straight for the scene of my midnight adventure. It was no less ugly by day than by night, and if possible even more malodorous. Push-carts vended unimaginable sweetmeats along the curb to a floating population of besmeared and screaming children; bleared slatterns, flabbily overflowing their bulging garments, jabbered in window and doorway; and the squat and dingy little saloon on the corner leered beerily at all. I waited half an hour before the Caruccis appeared. Then I made for a telephone in a state of disgusted relief, and called up Maclean.
"So you're in town now for a while," he said, in answer to my expurgated account of myself. "Well, I tell you how it is, Laurie, I'm pretty busy to-day. Let's have your number, an' I'll call you up later when I'm loose. You'll hang out at the Club, won't you?"
"I thought you wanted to see me about something."
"Oh, that. That wasn't anythin'— Why, yes, I'll lunch with you if you're in such a hurry, but I'll have to beat it right afterwards, 'cause I've got an assignment this afternoon."
At the Club, he plunged immediately into the irrelevant subject.
"Say, I've got to slide out after grub, an' go on a spook-hunt. There's this gang of Psychics or Spiritualists or whatever they are, up the line here, you see? And I'm coverin' one of their séances. Hamlet's old grandfather comes in an' rough-houses the furniture, an' Little Eva says a lot more than her prayers, an' you sit in a circle holdin' hands to get a line on the higher life. Don't you want to come along? You'll get some thrillin' moments."
"Is it a fake, then?" I asked.