CHAPTER IX

WHAT THE CABMAN KNEW

"One lady?" questioned Morris, excitedly, catching Peter by the arm as they hurried toward the taxi, the driver of which stood, expectant, by its open door.

"Only one," said Peter, in a low voice, "and I don't know yet which one, but we'll soon find out."

He motioned Morris to get into the cab, and spoke familiarly to the chauffeur: "Drive us over to the Square, old top, and line up along somewhere where it's quiet. We want to have a little talk with you. And you can keep your metre ticking, so that'll be O. K.," he added, with a grin.

The driver, a big, strong young fellow, grinned pleasantly in response and jumped to his wheel. In a moment they drew up in a quiet spot on the old Square.

"This do?" asked the taxi man, turning in his place and speaking through the open front of the cab.

"Fine," answered Peter, who was seated directly behind him. He leaned forward and spoke in a friendly, confidential manner. "We want to find out something about the lady you took from over there," he pointed in the direction of Waverly Place, "yesterday afternoon. She went away without leaving any address, and something has happened which makes it necessary for her friends to locate her at once, see?"

The driver nodded his comprehension.

"I want to be sure it's the lady we're looking for. It's an apartment house, you know," Peter explained, rapidly, "so perhaps you'll describe her to us."

"Well," said the driver, hesitatingly, "I don't know as I can tell you so much what she looked like. She was dressed plain, in something dark, though blue or black or what, I couldn't be so sure. She come hurrying along around the corner, but I was part way down the line, so I wasn't much interested, though she did seem to be lookin' for a taxi. She sorta gave the once-over to the two guys that was ahead of me, and then she stepped right up, quick, to my cab, and she says, lookin' at me sharp through her veil, 'Could you carry a heavy trunk down three flights of stairs by yourself?' she says. It was kinda unexpected, 'cause they usually gets you to the place and then springs it. 'I'll make it worth your while if you can manage it alone,' she says, flashing a five at me. 'It's this, over and above the fare,' she says, kinda nervous and excited like. 'You're on, lady,' I says. 'Lead me to that trunk!' I says, just like that. So she told me Ninety-nine Waverly Place, and I took her there and carried down the trunk, and, be gobs, it was heavy enough, and maybe worth the money at that."

Morris was listening eagerly to every word. He could keep silence no longer.

"But the lady!" he said, excitedly. "Tell us more about her. Was she very tall and slender and beautiful?"

Clancy touched his arm. He was afraid that the chauffeur, if given a clear description, would think he had seen what Morris so evidently wished him to have seen.

"You describe her in your own way, Bill," he interposed, addressing the driver, "but tell us everything you noticed about her. How about it, was she tall?"

"How'd you know my name was Bill?" asked the driver, irrelevantly, with a grin, and without waiting for a reply, he went on, "I don't think the lady was so very tall; at least not so you'd notice it particular, but she was sorta thin, and she kinda stooped a little. She had on a thick veil, so I didn't see her face hardly any when she come up to me on the street--only her eyes, and they was big and kinda--burning." He hesitated a little. Evidently his powers of description were not often put to the test.

"Well," said Peter, as the man paused, "you went up to the apartment with her to get the trunk. I think you said you carried it down three flights of stairs. That would have made it the floor next to the top one, wouldn't it?"

"No," said the cab driver, shaking his head, "it was the top floor, and thankful I was there wasn't any more of 'em."

"Did you see any one else in the apartment?" asked Peter, carefully restraining his impatience.

"Not a soul," answered the man, "and I don't think there was anybody else there. It was awful quiet. I didn't see anybody and I didn't hear anybody moving around."

"Did you notice anything unusual about the apartment?" asked Peter. "Was it--what you'd call--tidy--when you were there?"

"I don't know," said Bill, scratching his head. "I ain't much of a hand at noticing things, I'm afraid. Places is apt to be a bit upset when people are going away. I didn't think anything about that. I only just went into the back room to get the trunk--and----" A sudden thought seemed to strike him--"now I come to think of it, I did get just a little peek at the lady's face as I was coming along the hall with the trunk on me back. She'd watched me strap it up, and then she went ahead of me into a room off the hall, toward the front. When I come along, she was standing over by the window, and there was a looking glass on the wall right in front of her. She'd just held up her veil to look for something on the little table there was there, and I saw her in the glass, just for a second, before she pulled the veil down again." He paused, and added, doubtfully, "Did the lady you was lookin' for have a kind of a scar or something on her face, on--let's see--on this side?" He touched his right cheek.

Morris suppressed an exclamation, and Peter leaned still farther forward.

"What kind of a scar, Bill?" he asked, quietly.

"I don't know, exactly," answered the driver, hesitatingly. "The window was on the other side and I couldn't see so very plain, but it seemed to me there was some kind of a dark red mark on her cheek and down on her neck. I can't be sure, but I thought there was. I only saw it for a second. Does that help you any?"

"H'm'm----" said Peter. "Maybe. Maybe it will, Bill.... And you're pretty sure there wasn't any one else in the apartment?"

"Well," said Bill, "I'll leave it to you. I didn't see nobody and I didn't hear nobody, and when I took the trunk out, she was out on the stairs already, and she asked me to make sure the door was locked. And why would she be nervous about that, I asks you, if there was someone inside?"

"Doesn't seem reasonable, does it?" said Peter, thoughtfully. "But I don't quite see----You say the lady was in the bedroom when you passed the door, but she was outside, on the stairs, when you took the trunk out. How was that?"

"Why, I hadn't got the trunk just right on me shoulders, and I stopped a second to shift it over. By the time I'd got it good, she'd come into the hall from the front end, and she didn't waste no time getting the door open for me. She seemed in an awful hurry and excited like. She went on down the stairs a few steps to be out of the way of me'n the trunk, and then she stopped on a sudden, and says, 'Oh, I didn't think! You can't shut the door, can you?' And me bein' proud of me strength, says, 'Sure I can,' and I backs around sidewise and starts to shut the door, and darned if there wasn't a long trail of some kind of a lady's white silk dingbat caught onto the bottom of the trunk and been draggin' after me all the way down the hall, like a cat's tail."

Peter, hearing Morris draw in a sharp breath, cast a warning glance in his direction. The cabman, unobserving, went on--

"I thought I was going to have to get the lady back to pull it off and shut the door, but I give it a back kick and it landed free, and I shut the door by my own self. The lady was standin' part way down the stairs, awful impatient to be off (I guess, maybe, she was late for her train), and she looks back and says, 'Try the door, if you will, please, and see that it's fast.' So I did, and I guess that's about all, except that I took her and the trunk to the Penn. Station, and that's the last I seen of her."

"The Penn. Station. Good-night!" muttered Peter, disgustedly. "You can go anywhere in the country, almost, from the Penn. Station." Then, after an instant's thought, he said aloud: "That was funny, what you said about the white silk thing following you along the hall like a cat's tail, Bill. Where do you suppose you picked the thing up?"

"Must have come from the storeroom where the trunk was," said Bill, readily. "Otherwise I'd 'a' seen it before I got to the door, if it'd been layin' on the floor of the hall, I mean. Must have been behind the trunk, too, down in the corner, where it was dark."

"Are you sure it fell entirely inside the door when you kicked it loose?" asked Peter. "Try to remember, Bill. I have a particular reason for wanting to know."

The man looked at him curiously, but replied at once--

"Why, it must have, I should think, but I can't be exactly sure. To tell you the truth," with a note of apology, "I didn't care so much where it went, s'long as it didn't trail along and make me ridiculous, and I didn't look so very careful. The trunk was bearin' down on me shoulders, and the lady was in a hurry."

"Yes," said Peter, absently, thoughtfully, and added, "How far down the stairs was the lady when you shut the door, Bill? Two or three steps, or more? Was she far enough up, I mean, to see the scarf drop?"

"No, she wasn't. I'm sure." This time the driver answered with certainty: "She was half way down the first flight anyway, and me just able to see her head over the rail."

"H'm--yes," said Peter, slowly. "Yes."

He considered for a moment in silence. Then he turned to Morris.

"Anything more you can think of that Bill might be able to tell us, Mr. Morris?" he asked.

Morris shook his head, despondingly.

"All right then, Bill," said Clancy. "You've given us quite a lot to think about, anyway, and we're much obliged to you. Just give me your name and address, will you, in case anything should turn up that we needed you again," and having entered the direction in his notebook, he added, "Now beat it over to the Penn. Station and show us where you left the lady."

"And this is for yourself," said Donald, leaning quickly forward and slipping a bill into the man's hand.

The crisp slip of green-engraved paper must have been more effective than the most advertised pure gasoline and motor oil, for no cab of its size and condition had ever made better time than Bill's cab did in getting to its destination. It was only a matter of moments when they were gliding down the long incline to the station.

"This is where I left her," said Bill, as the cab, panting like an animal, with the haste it had made, stopped opposite the express windows, the lights of which showed yellow against the outer sunshine and the blue of the gas vapours which strove to escape from between the tall pillars of the carriage entrance.

The two young men leaped out of the cab and while Morris was paying the man off, Peter asked, in a low tone,

"Did you see where the lady went when she got out of the cab, Bill?"

"No," the man answered, straightening his leg to shove the money Morris had just given him into his trousers pocket. "She paid me as we were runnin' down, and as soon as a couple of guys had jerked the trunk off, I beat it."

"Well--all right, Bill," said Peter. "So long," and with a friendly wave of the hand, the cabman, realizing that the curiosity which he felt would probably never be satisfied, proceeded on his way, while the young detective, followed by Donald Morris, began his investigations.

He made searching inquiries at every ticket-window in the great, softly echoing main room of the station and at the express offices. He even went down to the waiting room of the Long Island Railroad and enquired there at all the possible places. No one remembered seeing, on the previous evening, a lady answering the meagre description Peter was able to give. Her costume was, obviously, conventional, and with her veil down, there had been nothing about her to attract attention.

Among the hundreds of people passing every hour through the vast station Anne Blake also had passed, leaving no trace.