Chapter II: Part 2

"Close?" asked Bill. "Close, did you say?" "Well, we know the trail," said Ronicky cheerily. "All we've got to do is to locate the shack that stands beside that trail. For old mountain men like us that ought to be nothing. What sort of a stream is this East River, though?"

Bill Gregg looked at his companion in disgust. He had become so used to regarding Doone as entirely infallible that it amazed and disheartened him to find that there was one topic so large about which Ronicky knew nothing. Perhaps the whole base for the good cheer of Ronicky was his ignorance of everything except the mountain desert.

"A river's a river," went on Ronicky blandly. "And it's got a town beside it, and in the town there's a house that looks over the water. Why, Bill, she's as good as found!"

"New York runs about a dozen miles along the shore of that river," groaned Bill Gregg.

"A dozen miles!" gasped Ronicky. He turned in his seat and stared at his companion. "Bill, you sure are making a man-sized joke. There ain't that much city in the world. A dozen miles of houses, one right next to the other?"

"Yep, and one on top of the other. And that ain't all. Start about the center of that town and swing a twenty-mile line around it, and the end of the line will be passing through houses most of the way."

Ronicky Doone glared at him in positive alarm. "Well," he said, "that's different."

"It sure is. I guess we've come on a wild-goose chase, Ronicky, hunting for a girl named Smith that lives on the bank of the East River!" He laughed bitterly.

"How come you know so much about New York?" asked Ronicky, eager to turn the subject of conversation until he could think of something to cheer his friend.

"Books," said Bill Gregg.

After that there was a long lull in the conversation. That night neither of them slept long, for every rattle and sway of the train was telling them that they were rocking along toward an impossible task. Even the cheer of Ronicky had broken down the next morning, and, though breakfast in the diner restored some of his confidence, he was not the man of the day before.

"Bill," he confided, on the way back to their seats from the diner, "there must be something wrong with me. What is it?"

"I dunno," said Bill. "Why?"

"People been looking at me."

"Ain't they got a right to do that?"

"Sure they have, in a way. But, when they don't seem to see you when you see them, and when they begin looking at you out of the corner of their eyes the minute you turn away, why then it seems to me that they're laughing at you, Bill."

"What they got to laugh about? I'd punch a gent in the face that laughed at me!"

But Ronicky fell into a philosophical brooding. "It can't be done, Bill. You can punch a gent for cussing you, or stepping on your foot, or crowding you, or sneering at you, or talking behind your back, or for a thousand things. But back here in a crowd you can't fight a gent for laughing at you. Laughing is outside the law most anywheres, Bill. It's the one thing you can't answer back except with more laughing. Even a dog gets sort of sick inside when you laugh at him, and a man is a pile worse. He wants to kill the gent that's laughing, and he wants to kill himself for being laughed at. Well, Bill, that's a good deal stronger than the way they been laughing at me, but they done enough to make me think a bit. They been looking at three things--these here spats, the red rim of my handkerchief sticking out of my pocket, and that soft gray hat, when I got it on."

"Derned if I see anything wrong with your outfit. Didn't they tell you that that was the style back East, to have spats like that on?"

"Sure," said Ronicky, "but maybe they didn't know, or maybe they go with some, but not with me. Maybe I'm kind of too brown and outdoors looking to fit with spats and handkerchiefs like this."

"Ronicky," said Bill Gregg in admiration, "maybe you ain't read a pile, but you figure things out just like a book."

Their conversation was cut short by the appearance of a drift of houses, and then more and more. From the elevated line on which they ran presently they could look down on block after block of roofs packed close together, or big business structures, as they reached the uptown business sections, and finally Ronicky gasped, as they plunged into utter darkness that roared past the window.

"We go underground to the station," Bill Gregg explained. He was a little startled himself, but his reading had fortified him to a certain extent.

"But is there still some more of New York?" asked Ronicky humbly.

"More? We ain't seen a corner of it!" Bill's superior information made him swell like a frog in the sun. "This is kinder near One Hundredth Street where we dived down. New York keeps right on to First Street, and then it has a lot more streets below that. But that's just the Island of Manhattan. All around there's a lot more. Manhattan is mostly where they work. They live other places."

It was not very long before the train slowed down to make Grand Central Station. On the long platform Ronicky surrendered his suit case to the first porter. Bill Gregg was much alarmed. "What'd you do that for?" he asked, securing a stronger hold on his own valise and brushing aside two or three red caps.

"He asked me for it," explained Ronicky. "I wasn't none too set on giving it to him to carry, but I hated to hurt his feelings. Besides, they're all done up in uniforms. Maybe this is their job."

"But suppose that feller got away out of sight, what would you do? Your brand-new pair of Colts is lying away in it!"

"He won't get out of sight none," Ronicky assured his friend grimly. "I got another Colt with me, and, no matter how fast he runs, a forty-five slug can run a pile faster. But come on, Bill. The word in this town seems to be to keep right on moving."

They passed under an immense, brightly lighted vault and then wriggled through the crowds in pursuit of the astonishingly agile porter. So they came out of the big station to Forty-second Street, where they found themselves confronted by a taxi driver and the question: "Where?"

"I dunno," said Ronicky to Bill. "Your reading tell you anything about the hotels in this here town?"

"Not a thing," said Bill, "because I never figured that I'd be fool enough to come this far away from my home diggings. But here I am, and we don't know nothing."

"Listen, partner," said Ronicky to the driver. "Where's a fair-to-medium place to stop at?"

The taxi driver swallowed a smile that left a twinkle about his eyes which nothing could remove. "What kind of a place? Anywhere from fifty cents to fifty bucks a night."

"Fifty dollars!" exclaimed Bill Gregg. "Can you lay over that, Ronicky? Our wad won't last a week."

"Say, pal," said the taxi driver, becoming suddenly friendly, "I can fix you up. I know a neat little joint where you'll be as snug as you want. They'll stick you about one-fifty per, but you can't beat that price in this town and keep clean."

"Take us there," said Bill Gregg, and they climbed into the machine.

The taxi turned around, shot down Park Avenue, darted aside into the darker streets to the east of the district and came suddenly to a halt.

"Did you foller that trail?" asked Bill Gregg in a chuckling whisper.

"Sure! Twice to the left, then to the right, and then to the left again. I know the number of blocks, too. Ain't no reason for getting rattled just because a joint is strange to us. New York may be tolerable big, but it's got men in it just like we are, and maybe a lot worse kinds."

As they got out of the little car they saw that the taxi driver had preceded them, carrying their suit cases. They followed up a steep pitch of stairs to the first floor of the hotel, where the landing had been widened to form a little office.

"Hello, Bert," said their driver. "I picked up these gentlemen at Grand Central. They ain't wise to the town, so I put 'em next to you. Fix 'em up here?"

"Sure," said Bert, lifting a huge bulk of manhood from behind the desk. He placed his fat hands on the top of it and observed his guests with a smile. "Ill make you right to home here, friends. Thank you, Joe!"

Joe grinned, nodded and, receiving his money from Bill Gregg, departed down the stairs, humming. Their host, in the meantime, had picked up their suit cases and led the way down a hall dimly lighted by two flickering gas jets. Finally he reached a door and led them into a room where the gas had to be lighted. It showed them a cheerless apartment in spite of the red of wall paper and carpet.

"Only three bucks," said the proprietor with the air of one bestowing charity out of the fullness of his heart. "Bathroom only two doors down. I guess you can't beat this layout, gents?"

Bill Gregg glanced once about him and nodded.

"You come up from the South, maybe?" asked the proprietor, lingering at the door.

"West," said Bill Gregg curtly.

"You don't say! Then you boys must be used to your toddy at night, eh?"

"It's a tolerable dry country out there," said Ronicky without enthusiasm.

"All the more reason you need some liquor to moisten it up. Wait till I get you a bottle of rye I got handy." And he disappeared in spite of their protests.

"I ain't a drinking man," said Gregg, "and I know you ain't, but it's sure insulting to turn down a drink in these days!"

Ronicky nodded, and presently the host returned with two glasses, rattling against a tall bottle on a tray.

"Say, when," he said, filling the glasses and keeping on, in spite of their protests, until each glass was full.

"I guess it looks pretty good to you to see the stuff again," he said, stepping back and rubbing his hands like one warmed by the consciousness of a good deed. "It ain't very plentiful around here."

"Well," said Gregg, swinging up his glass, "here's in your eye, Ronicky, and here's to you, sir!"

"Wait," replied Ronicky Doone. "Hold on a minute, Bill. Looks to me like you ain't drinking," he said to the proprietor.

The fat man waved the suggestion aside. "Never touch it," he assured them. "Used to indulge a little in light wines and beers when the country was wet, but when it went dry the stuff didn't mean enough to me to make it worth while dodging the law. I just manage to keep a little of it around for old friends and men out of a dry country."

"But we got a funny habit out in our country. We can't no ways drink unless the gent that's setting them out takes something himself. It ain't done that way in our part of the land," said Ronicky.

"It ain't?"

"Never!"

"Come, come! That's a good joke. But, even if I can't be with you, boys, drink hearty."

Ronicky Doone shook his head. "No joke at all," he said firmly. "Matter of politeness that a lot of gents are terrible hard set on out where we come from."

"Why, Ronicky," protested Bill Gregg, "ain't you making it a little strong? For my part I've drunk twenty times without having the gent that set 'em up touch a thing. I reckon I can do it again. Here's how!"

"Wait!" declared Ronicky Doone. And there was a little jarring ring in his voice that arrested the hand of Bill Gregg in the very act of raising the glass.

Ronicky crossed the room quickly, took a glass from the washstand and, returning to the center table, poured a liberal drink of the whisky into it.

"I dunno about my friend," he went on, almost sternly, to the bewildered hotel keeper. "I dunno about him, but some gents feel so strong about not drinking alone that they'd sooner fight. Well, sir, I'm one of that kind. So I say, there's your liquor. Get rid of it!"

The fat man reached the center table and propped himself against it, gasping. His whole big body seemed to be wilting, as though in a terrific heat. "I dunno!" he murmured. "I dunno what's got into you fellers. I tell you, I never drink."

"You lie, you fat fool!" retorted Ronicky. "Didn't I smell your breath?"

Bill Gregg dropped his own glass on the table and hurriedly came to confront his host by the side of Ronicky.

"Breath?" asked the fat man hurriedly, still gasping more and more heavily for air. "I--I may have taken a small tonic after dinner. In fact, think I did. That's all. Nothing more, I assure you. I--I have to be a sober man in my work."

"You got to make an exception this evening," said Ronicky, more fiercely than ever. "I ought to make you drink all three drinks for being so slow about drinking one!"

"Three drinks!" exclaimed the fat man, trembling violently. "It--it would kill me!"

"I think it would," said Ronicky. "I swear I think it would. And maybe even one will be a sort of a shock, eh?"

He commanded suddenly: "Drink! Drink that glass and clean out the last drop of it, or we'll tie you and pry your mouth open and pour the whole bottle down your throat. You understand?"

A feeble moan came from the throat of the hotel keeper. He cast one frantic glance toward the door and a still more frantic appeal centered on Ronicky Doone, but the face of the latter was as cold as stone.

"Then take your own glasses, boys," he said, striving to smile, as he picked up his own drink.

"You drink first, and you drink alone," declared Ronicky. "Now!"

The movement of his hand was as ominous as if he had whipped out a revolver. The fat man tossed off the glass of whisky and then stood with a pudgy hand pressed against his breast and the upward glance of one who awaits a calamity. Under the astonished eyes of Bill Gregg he turned pale, a sickly greenish pallor. His eyes rolled, and his hand on the table shook, and the arm that supported him sagged.

"Open the window," he said. "The air--there ain't no air. I'm choking--and--"

"Get him some water," cried Bill Gregg, "while I open the window."

"Stay where you are, Bill."

"But he looks like he's dying!"

"Then he's killed himself."

"Gents," began the fat man feebly and made a short step toward them. The step was uncompleted. In the middle of it he wavered, put out his arms and slumped upon his side on the floor.

Bill Gregg cried out softly in astonishment and horror, but Ronicky Doone knelt calmly beside the fallen bulk and felt the beating of his heart.

"He ain't dead," he said quietly, "but he'll be tolerably sick for a while. Now come along with me."

"But what's all this mean?" asked Bill Gregg in a whisper, as he picked up his suit case and hurried after Ronicky.

"Doped booze," said Ronicky curtly.

They hurried down the stairs and came out onto the dark street. There Ronicky Doone dropped his suit case and dived into a dark nook beside the entrance. There was a brief struggle. He came out again, pushing a skulking figure before him, with the man's arm twisted behind his back.

"Take off this gent's hat, will you?" asked Ronicky.

Bill Gregg obeyed, too dumb with astonishment to think. "It's the taxi driver!" he exclaimed.

"I thought so!" muttered Ronicky. "The skunk came back here to wait till we were fixed right now. What'll we do with him?"

"I begin to see what's come off" said Bill Gregg, frowning into the white, scowling face of the taxi driver. The man was like a rat, but, in spite of his fear, he did not make a sound.

"Over there!" said Bill Gregg, nodding toward a flight of cellar steps.

They caught the man between them, rushed him to the steps and flung him headlong down. There was a crashing fall, groans and then silence.

"He'll have a broken bone or two, maybe," said Ronicky, peering calmly into the darkness, "but he'll live to trap somebody else, curse him!" And, picking up their suit cases again, they started to retrace their steps.

Chapter Seven

_The First Clue_

They did not refer to the incidents of that odd reception in New York until they had located a small hotel for themselves, not three blocks away. It was no cheaper, but they found a pleasant room, clean and with electric lights. It was not until they had bathed and were propped up in their beds for a good-night smoke, which cow-punchers love, that Bill Gregg asked: "And what gave you the tip, Ronicky?"

"I dunno. In my business you got to learn to watch faces, Bill. Suppose you sit in at a five-handed game of poker. One gent says everything with his face, while he's picking up his cards. Another gent don't say a thing, but he shows what he's got by the way he moves in his chair, or the way he opens and shuts his hands. When you said something about our wad I seen the taxi driver blink. Right after that he got terrible friendly and said he could steer us to a friend of his that could put us up for the night pretty comfortable. Well, it wasn't hard to put two and two together. Not that I figured anything out. Just was walking on my toes, ready to jump in any direction."

As for Bill Gregg, he brooded for a time on what he had heard, then he shook his head and sighed. "I'd be a mighty helpless kid in this here town if I didn't have you along, Ronicky," he said.

"Nope," insisted Ronicky. "Long as you use another gent for a sort of guide you feel kind of helpless. But, when you step off for yourself, everything is pretty easy. You just were waiting for me to take the lead, or you'd have done just as much by yourself."

Again Bill Gregg sighed, as he shook his head. "If this is what New York is like," he said, "we're in for a pretty bad time. And this is what they call a civilized town? Great guns, they need martial law and a thousand policemen to the block to keep a gent's life and pocketbook safe in this town! First gent we meet tries to bump us off or get our wad. Don't look like we're going to have much luck, Ronicky."

"We saved our hides, I guess."

"That's about all."

"And we learned something."

"Sure."

"Then I figure it was a pretty good night.

"Another thing, Bill. I got an idea from that taxi gent. I figure that whole gang of taxi men are pretty sharp in the eye. What I mean is that we can tramp up and down along this here East River, and now and then we'll talk to some taxi men that do most of their work from stands in them parts of the town. Maybe we can get on her trail that way. Anyways, it's an opening."

"Maybe," said Bill Gregg dubiously. He reached under his pillow. "But I'm sure going to sleep with a gun under my head in this town!" With this remark he settled himself for repose and presently was snoring loudly.

Ronicky presented a brave face to the morning and at once started with Bill Gregg to tour along the East River. That first day Ronicky insisted that they simply walk over the whole ground, so as to become fairly familiar with the scale of their task. They managed to make the trip before night and returned to the hotel, footsore from the hard, hot pavements. There was something unkindly and ungenerous in those pavements, it seemed to Ronicky. He was discovering to his great amazement that the loneliness of the mountain desert is nothing at all compared to the loneliness of the Manhattan crowd.

Two very gloomy and silent cow-punchers ate their dinner that night and went to bed early. But in the morning they began the actual work of their campaign. It was an arduous labor. It meant interviewing in every district one or two storekeepers, and asking the mail carriers for "Caroline Smith," and showing the picture to taxi drivers. These latter were the men, insisted Ronicky, who would eventually bring them to Caroline Smith. "Because, if they've ever drove a girl as pretty as that, they'll remember for quite a while."

"But half of these gents ain't going to talk to us, even if they know," Bill Gregg protested, after he had been gruffly refused an answer a dozen times in the first morning.

"Some of 'em won't talk," admitted Ronicky, "but that's probably because they don't know. Take 'em by and large, most gents like to tell everything they know, and then some!"

As a matter of fact they met with rather more help than they wanted. In spite of all their efforts to appear casual there was something too romantic in this search for a girl to remain entirely unnoticed. People whom they asked became excited and offered them a thousand suggestions. Everybody, it seemed, had, somewhere, somehow, heard of a Caroline Smith living in his own block, and every one remembered dimly having passed a girl on the street who looked exactly like Caroline Smith. But they went resolutely on, running down a thousand false clues and finding at the end of each something more ludicrous than what had gone before. Maiden ladies with many teeth and big glasses they found; and they discovered, at the ends of the trails on which they were advised to go, young women and old, ugly girls and pretty ones, but never any one who in the slightest degree resembled Caroline Smith.

In the meantime they were working back and forth, in their progress along the East River, from the slums to the better residence districts. They bought newspapers at little stationery stores and worked up chance conversations with the clerks, particularly girl clerks, whenever they could find them.

"Because women have the eye for faces," Ronicky would say, "and, if a girl like Caroline Smith came into the shop, she'd be remembered for a while."

But for ten days they labored without a ghost of a success. Then they noticed the taxi stands along the East Side and worked them as carefully as they could, and it was on the evening of the eleventh day of the search that they reached the first clue.

They had found a taxi drawn up before a saloon, converted into an eating place, and when they went inside they found the driver alone in the restaurant. They worked up the conversation, as they had done a hundred times before. Gregg produced the picture and began showing it to Ronicky.

"Maybe the lady's around here," said Ronicky, "but I'm new in this part of town." He took the picture and turned to the taxi driver. "Maybe you've been around this part of town and know the folks here. Ever see this girl around?" And he passed the picture to the other.

The taxi driver bowed his head over it in a close scrutiny. When he looked up his face was a blank.

"I don't know. Lemme see. I think I seen a girl like her the other day, waiting for the traffic to pass at Seventy-second and Broadway. Yep, she sure was a ringer for this picture." He passed the picture back, and a moment later he finished his meal, paid his check and went sauntering through the door.

"Quick!" said Ronicky, the moment the chauffeur had disappeared. "Pay the check and come along. That fellow knows something."

Bill Gregg, greatly excited, obeyed, and they hurried to the door of the place. They were in time to see the taxicab lurch away from the curb and go humming down the street, while the driver leaned out to the side and looked back.

"He didn't see us," said Ronicky confidently.

"But what did he leave for?"

"He's gone to tell somebody, somewhere, that we're looking for Caroline Smith. Come on!" He stepped out to the curb and stopped a passing taxi. "Follow that machine and keep a block away from it," he ordered.

"Bootlegger?" asked the taxi driver cheerily.

"I don't know, but just drift along behind him till he stops. Can you do that?"

"Watch me!"

And, with Ronicky and Bill Gregg installed in his machine, he started smoothly on the trail.

Straight down the cross street, under the roaring elevated tracks of Second and Third Avenues, they passed, and on First Avenue they turned and darted sharply south for a round dozen blocks, then went due east and came, to a halt after a brief run.

"He's stopped in Beekman Place," said the driver, jerking open the door. "If I run in there he'll see me."

Ronicky stepped from the machine, paid him and dismissed him with a word of praise for his fine trailing. Then he stepped around the corner.

What he saw was a little street closed at both ends and only two or three blocks long. It had the serene, detached air of a village a thousand miles from any great city, with its grave rows of homely houses standing solemnly face to face. Well to the left, the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge swung its great arch across the river, and it led, Ronicky knew, to Long Island City beyond, but here everything was cupped in the village quiet.

The machine which they had been pursuing was drawn up on the right-hand side of the street, looking south, and, even as Ronicky glanced around the corner, he saw the driver leave his seat, dart up a flight of steps and ring the bell.

Ronicky could not see who opened the door, but, after a moment of talk, the chauffeur from the car they had pursued was allowed to enter. And, as he stepped across the threshold, he drew off his cap with a touch of reverence which seemed totally out of keeping with his character as Ronicky had seen it.

"Bill," he said to Gregg, "we've got something. You seen him go up those steps to that house?"

"Sure."

Bill Gregg's eyes were flashing with the excitement. "That house has somebody in it who knows Caroline Smith, and that somebody is excited because we're hunting for her," said Bill. "Maybe it holds Caroline herself. Who can tell that? Let's go see."

"Wait till that taxi driver goes. If he'd wanted us to know about Caroline he'd of told us. He doesn't want us to know and he'd maybe take it pretty much to heart if he knew we'd followed him."

"What he thinks don't worry me none. I can tend to three like him."

"Maybe, but you couldn't handle thirty, and coyotes like him hunt in packs, always. The best fighting pair of coyotes that ever stepped wouldn't have no chance against a lofer wolf, but no lofer wolf could stand off a dozen or so of the little devils. So keep clear of these little rat-faced gents, Bill. They hunt in crowds."

Presently they saw the chauffeur coming down the steps. Even at that distance it could be seen that he was smiling broadly, and that he was intensely pleased with himself and the rest of the world.

Starting up his machine, he swung it around dexterously, as only New York taxi drivers can, and sped down the street by the way he had come, passing Gregg and Ronicky, who had flattened themselves against the fence to keep from being seen. They observed that, while he controlled the car with one hand, with the other he was examining the contents of his wallet.

"Money for him!" exclaimed Ronicky, as soon as the car was out of sight around the corner. "This begins to look pretty thick, Bill. Because he goes and tells them that he's taken us off the trail they not only thank him, but they pay him for it. And, by the face of him, as he went by, they pay him pretty high. Bill, it's easy to figure that they don't want any friend near Caroline Smith, and most like they don't even want us near that house."

"I only want to go near once," said Bill Gregg. "I just want to find out if the girl is there."

"Go break in on 'em?"

"Break in! Ronicky, that's burglary!"

"Sure it is."

"Ill just ask for Caroline Smith at the door."

"Try it."

The irony made Bill Gregg stop in the very act of leaving and glance back. But he went on again resolutely and stamped up the steps to the front door of the house.

It was opened to him almost at once by a woman, for Bill's hat come off. For a moment he was explaining. Then there was a pause in his gestures, as she made the reply. Finally he spoke again, but was cut short by the loud banging of the door.

Bill Gregg drew himself up rigidly and slowly replaced the hat on his head. If a man had turned that trick on him, a .45-caliber slug would have gone crashing through the door in search of him to teach him a Westerner's opinion of such manners.

Ronicky Doone could not help smiling to himself, as he saw Bill Gregg stump stiffly down the stairs, limping a little on his wounded leg, and come back with a grave dignity to the starting point. He was still crimson to the roots of his hair.

"Let's start," he said. "If that happens again I'll be doing a couple of murders in this here little town and getting myself hung."

"What happened?"

"An old hag jerked open the door after I rang the bell. I asked her nice and polite if a lady named Caroline Smith was in the house? 'No,' says she, 'and if she was, what's that to you?' I told her I'd come a long ways to see Caroline. 'Then go a long ways back without seeing Caroline,' says this withered old witch, and she banged the door right in my face. Man, I'm still seeing red. Them words of the old woman were whips, and every one of them sure took off the hide. I used to think that old lady Moore in Martindale was a pretty nasty talker, but this one laid over her a mile. But we're beat, Ronicky. You couldn't get by that old woman with a thousand men."

"Maybe not," said Ronicky Doone, "but we're going to try. Did you look across the street and see a sign a while ago?"

"Which side?"

"Side right opposite Caroline's house."

"Sure. 'Room To Rent.'"

"I thought so. Then that's our room."

"Eh?"

"That's our room, partner, and right at the front window over the street one of us is going to keep watch day and night, till we make sure that Caroline Smith don't live in that house. Is that right?"

"That's a great idea!" He started away from the fence.

"Wait!" Ronicky caught him by the shoulder and held him back. "We'll wait till night and then go and get that room. If Caroline is in the house yonder, and they know we're looking for her, it's easy that she won't be allowed to come out the front of the house so long as we're perched up at the window, waiting to see her. We'll come back tonight and start waiting."

Chapter Eight

_Two Apparitions_

They found that the room in the house on Beekman Place, opposite that which they felt covered their quarry, could be secured, and they were shown to it by a quiet old gentlewoman, found a big double room that ran across the whole length of the house. From the back it looked down on the lights glimmering on the black East River and across to the flare of Brooklyn; to the left the whole arc of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge was exposed. In front the windows overlooked Beekman Place and were directly opposite, the front of the house to which the taxi driver had gone that afternoon.

Here they took up the vigil. For four hours one of the two sat with eyes never moving from the street and the windows of the house across the street; and then he left the post, and the other took it.

It was vastly wearying work. Very few vehicles came into the light of the street lamp beneath them, and every person who dismounted from one of them had to be scrutinized with painful diligence.

Once a girl, young and slender and sprightly, stepped out of a taxi, about ten o'clock at night, and ran lightly up the steps of the house. Ronicky caught his friend by the shoulders and dragged him to the window. "There she is now!" he exclaimed.

But the eye of the lover, even though the girl was in a dim light, could not he deceived. The moment he caught her profile, as she turned in opening the door, Bill Gregg shook his head. "That's not the one. She's all different, a pile different, Ronicky."

Ronicky sighed. "I thought we had her," he said. "Go on back to sleep. I'll call you again if anything happens."

But nothing more happened that night, though even in the dull, ghost hours of the early morning they did not relax their vigil. But all the next day there was still no sign of Caroline Smith in the house across the street; no face like hers ever appeared at the windows. Apparently the place was a harmless rooming house of fairly good quality. Not a sign of Caroline Smith appeared even during the second day. By this time the nerves of the two watchers were shattered by the constant strain, and the monotonous view from the front window was beginning to madden them.

"It's proof that she ain't yonder," said Bill Gregg. "Here's two days gone, and not a sign of her yet. It sure means that she ain't in that house, unless she's sick in bed." And he grew pale at the thought.

"Partner," said Ronicky Doone, "if they are trying to keep her away from us they sure have the sense to keep her under cover for as long as two days. Ain't that right? It looks pretty bad for us, but I'm staying here for one solid week, anyway. It's just about our last chance, Bill. We've done our hunting pretty near as well as we could. If we don't land her this trip, I'm about ready to give up."

Bill Gregg sadly agreed that this was their last chance and they must play it to the limit. One week was decided on as a fair test. If, at the end of that time, Caroline Smith did not come out of the house across the street they could conclude that she did not stay there. And then there would be nothing for it but to take the first train back West.

The third day passed and the fourth, dreary, dreary days of unfaltering vigilance on the part of the two watchers. And on the fifth morning even Ronicky Doone sat with his head in his hands at the window, peering through the slit between the drawn curtains which sheltered him from being observed at his spying. When he called out softly, the sound brought Gregg, with one long leap out of the chair where he was sleeping, to the window. There could be no shadow of a doubt about it. There stood Caroline Smith in the door of the house!

She closed the door behind her and, walking to the top of the steps, paused there and looked up and down the street.

Bill Gregg groaned, snatched his hat and plunged through the door, and Ronicky heard the brief thunder of his feet down the first flight of stairs, then the heavy thumps, as he raced around the landing. He was able to trace him down all the three flights of steps to the bottom.

And so swift was that descent that, when the girl, idling down the steps across the street, came onto the sidewalk, Bill Gregg rushed out from the other side and ran toward her.

They made a strange picture as they came to a halt at the same instant, the girl shrinking back in apparent fear of the man, and Bill Gregg stopping by that same show of fear, as though by a blow in the face. There was such a contrast between the two figures that Ronicky Doone might have laughed, had he not been shaking his head with sympathy for Bill Gregg.

For never had the miner seemed so clumsily big and gaunt, never had his clothes seemed so unpressed and shapeless, while his soft gray hat, to which he still clung religiously, appeared hopelessly out of place in contrast with the slim prettiness of the girl. She wore a black straw hat, turned back from her face, with a single big red flower at the side of it; her dress was a tailored gray tweed. The same distinction between their clothes was in their faces, the finely modeled prettiness of her features and the big, careless chiseling of the features of Bill Gregg.

Ronicky Doone did not wonder that, after her first fear, her gesture was one of disdain and surprise.

Bill Gregg had dragged the hat from his head, and the wind lifted his long black hair and made it wild. He went a long, slow step closer to her, with both his hands outstretched.

A strange scene for a street, and Ronicky Doone saw the girl flash a glance over her shoulder and back to the house from which she had just come. Ronicky Doone followed that glance, and he saw, all hidden save the profile of the face, a man standing at an opposite window and smiling scornfully down at that picture in the street.

What a face it was! Never in his life had Ronicky Doone seen a man who, in one instant, filled him with such fear and hatred, such loathing and such dread, such scorn and such terror. The nose was hooked like the nose of a bird of prey; the eyes were long and slanting like those of an Oriental. The face was thin, almost fleshless, so that the bony jaw stood out like the jaw of a death's-head.

As for the girl, the sight of that onlooker seemed to fill her with a new terror. She shrank back from Bill Gregg until her shoulders were almost pressed against the wall of the house. And Ronicky saw her head shake, as she denied Bill the right of advancing farther. Still he pleaded, and still she ordered him away. Finally Bill Gregg drew himself up and bowed to her and turned on his heel.

The girl hesitated a moment. It seemed to Ronicky, in spite of the fact that she had just driven Bill Gregg away, as if she were on the verge of following him to bring him back. For she made a slight outward gesture with one hand.

If this were in her mind, however, it vanished instantly. She turned with a shudder and hurried away down the street.

As for Bill Gregg he bore himself straight as a soldier and came back across the pavement, but it was the erectness of a soldier who has met with a crushing defeat and only preserves an outward resolution, while all the spirit within is crushed.

Ronicky Doone turned gloomily away from the window and listened to the progress of Gregg up the stairs. What a contrast between the ascent and the descent! He had literally flown down. Now his heels clumped out a slow and regular death march, as he came back to the room.

When Gregg opened the door Ronicky Doone blinked and drew in a deep breath at the sight of the poor fellow's face. Gregg had known before that he truly loved this girl whom he had never seen, but he had never dreamed what the strength of that love was. Now, in the very moment of seeing his dream of the girl turned into flesh and blood, he had lost her, and there was something like death in the face of the big miner as he dropped his hat on the floor and sank into a chair.

After that he did not move so much as a finger from the position into which he had fallen limply. His legs were twisted awkwardly, sprawling across the floor in front of him; one long arm dragged down toward the floor, as if there was no strength in it to support the weight of the labor-hardened hands; his chin was fallen against his breast.

When Ronicky Doone crossed to him and laid a kind hand on his shoulder he did not look up. "It's ended," said Bill Gregg faintly. "Now we hit the back trail and forget all about this." He added with a faint attempt at cynicism: "I've just wasted a pile of good money-making time from the mine, that's all."

"H'm!" said Ronicky Doone. "Bill, look me in the eye and tell me, man to man, that you're a liar!" He added: "Can you ever be happy without her, man?"

The cruelty of that speech made Gregg flush and look up sharply. This was exactly what Ronicky Doone wanted.

"I guess they ain't any use talking about that part of it," said Gregg huskily.

"Ain't there? That's where you and me don't agree! Why, Bill, look at the way things have gone! You start out with a photograph of a girl. Now you've followed her, found her name, tracked her clear across the continent and know her street address, and you've given her a chance to see your own face. Ain't that something done? After you've done all that are you going to give up now? Not you, Bill! You're going to buck up and go ahead full steam. Eh?"

Bill Gregg smiled sourly. "D'you know what she said when I come rushing up and saying: 'I'm Bill Gregg!' D'you know what she said?"

"Well?"

"'Bill Gregg?' she says. 'I don't remember any such name!'

"That took the wind out of me. I only had enough left to say: 'The gent that was writing those papers to the correspondence school to you from the West, the one you sent your picture to and--'

"'Sent my picture to!' she says and looks as if the ground had opened under her feet. 'You're mad!' she says. And then she looks back over her shoulder as much as to wish she was safe back in her house!"

"D'you know why she looked back over her shoulder?"

"Just for the reason I told you."

"No, Bill. There was a gent standing up there at a window watching her and how she acted. He's the gent that kept her from writing to you and signing her name. He's the one who's kept her in that house. He's the one that knew we were here watching all the time, that sent out the girl with exact orders how she should act if you was to come out and speak to her when you seen her! Bill, what that girl told you didn't come out of her own head. It come out of the head of the gent across the way. When you turned your back on her she looked like she'd run after you and try to explain. But the fear of that fellow up in the window was too much for her, and she didn't dare. Bill, to get at the girl you got to get that gent I seen grinning from the window."

"Grinning?" asked Bill Gregg, grinding his teeth and starting from his chair. "Was the skunk laughing at me?"

"Sure! Every minute."

Bill Gregg groaned. "I'll smash every bone in his ugly head."

"Shake!" said Ronicky Doone. "That's the sort of talk I wanted to hear, and I'll help, Bill. Unless I'm away wrong, it'll take the best that you and me can do, working together, to put that gent down!"

Chapter Nine

_A Bold Venture_

But how to reach that man of the smile and the sneer, how, above all, to make sure that he was really the power controlling Caroline Smith, were problems which could not be solved in a moment.

Bill Gregg contributed one helpful idea. "We've waited a week to see her; now that we've seen her let's keep on waiting," he said, and Ronicky agreed.

They resumed the vigil, but it had already been prolonged for such a length of time that it was impossible to keep it as strictly as it had been observed before. Bill Gregg, outworn by the strain of the long watching and the shock of the disappointment of that day, went completely to pieces and in the early evening fell asleep. But Ronicky Doone went out for a light dinner and came back after dark, refreshed and eager for action, only to find that Bill Gregg was incapable of being roused. He slept like a dead man.

Ronicky went to the window and sat alone. Few of the roomers were home in the house opposite. They were out for the evening, or for dinner, at least, and the face of the building was dark and cold, the light from the street lamp glinting unevenly on the windowpanes. He had sat there staring at the old house so many hours in the past that it was beginning to be like a face to him, to be studied as one might study a human being. And the people it sheltered, the old hag who kept the door, the sneering man and Caroline Smith, were to the house like the thoughts behind a man's face, an inscrutable face. But, if one cannot pry behind the mask of the human, at least it is possible to enter a house and find--

At this point in his thoughts Ronicky Doone rose with a quickening pulse. Suppose he, alone, entered that house tonight by stealth, like a burglar, and found what he could find?

He brushed the idea away. Instantly it returned to him. The danger of the thing, and danger there certainly would be in the vicinity of him of the sardonic profile, appealed to him more and more keenly. Moreover, he must go alone. The heavy-footed Gregg would be a poor helpmate on such an errand of stealth.

Ronicky turned away from the window, turned back to it and looked once more at the tall front of the building opposite; then he started to get ready for the expedition.

The preparations were simple. He put on a pair of low shoes, very light and with rubber heels. In them he could move with the softness and the speed of a cat. Next he dressed in a dark-gray suit, knowing that this is the color hardest to see at night. His old felt hat he had discarded long before in favor of the prevailing style of the average New Yorker. For this night expedition he put on a cap which drew easily over his ears and had a long visor, shadowing the upper part of his face. Since it might be necessary to remain as invisible as possible, he obscured the last bit of white that showed in his costume, with a black neck scarf.

Then he looked in the glass. A lean face looked back at him, the eyes obscured under the cap, a stern, resolute face, with a distinct threat about it. He hardly recognized himself in the face in the glass.

He went to his suit case and brought out his favorite revolver. It was a long and ponderous weapon to be hidden beneath his clothes, but to Ronicky Doone that gun was a friend well tried in many an adventure. His fingers went deftly over it. It literally fell to pieces at his touch, and he examined it cautiously and carefully in all its parts, looking to the cartridges before he assembled the weapon again. For, if it became necessary to shoot this evening, it would be necessary to shoot to kill.

He then strolled down the street, passing the house opposite, with a close scrutiny. A narrow, paved sidewalk ran between it and the house on its right, and all the windows opening on this small court were dark. Moreover, the house which was his quarry was set back several feet from the street, an indentation which would completely hide him from anyone who looked from the street. Ronicky made up his mind at once. He went to the end of the block, crossed over and, turning back on the far side of the street, slipped into the opening between the houses.

Instantly he was in a dense darkness. For five stories above him the two buildings towered, shutting out the starlight. Looking straight up he found only a faint reflection of the glow of the city lights in the sky.

At last he found a cellar window. He tried it and found it locked, but a little maneuvering with his knife enabled him to turn the catch at the top of the lower sash. Then he raised it slowly and leaned into the blackness. Something incredibly soft, tenuous, clinging, pressed at once against his face. He started back with a shudder and brushed away the remnants of a big spider web.

Then he leaned in again. It was an intense blackness. The moment his head was in the opening the sense of listening, which is ever in a house, came to him. There were the strange, musty, underground odors which go with cellars and make men think of death.

However, he must not stay here indefinitely. To be seen leaning in at this window was as bad as to be seen in the house itself. He slipped through the opening at once, and beneath his feet there was a soft crunching of coal. He had come directly into the bin. Turning, he closed the window, for that would be a definite clue to any one who might pass down the alley.

As he stood surrounded by that hostile silence, that evil darkness, he grew somewhat accustomed to the dimness, and he could make out not definite objects, but ghostly outlines. Presently he took out the small electric torch which he carried and examined his surroundings.

The bin had not yet received the supply of winter coal and was almost empty. He stepped out of it into a part of the basement which had been used apparently for storing articles not worth keeping, but too good to be thrown away--an American habit of thrift. Several decrepit chairs and rickety cabinets and old console tables were piled together in a tangled mass. Ronicky looked at them with an unaccountable shudder, as if he read in them the history of the ruin and fall and death of many an old inhabitant of this house. It seemed to his excited imagination that the man with the sneer had been the cause of all the destruction and would be the cause of more.

He passed back through the basement quickly, eager to be out of the musty odors and his gloomy thoughts. He found the storerooms, reached the kitchen stairs and ascended at once. Halfway up the stairs, the door above him suddenly opened and light poured down at him. He saw the flying figure of a cat, a broom behind it, a woman behind the broom.

"Whisht! Out of here, dirty beast!"

The cat thudded against Ronicky's knee, screeched and disappeared below; the woman of the broom shaded her eyes and peered down the steps. "A queer cat!" she muttered, then slammed the door.

It seemed certain to Ronicky that she must have seen him, yet he knew that the blackness of the cellar had probably half blinded her. Besides, he had drawn as far as possible to one side of the steps, and in this way she might easily have overlooked him.

In the meantime it seemed that this way of entering the house was definitely blocked. He paused a moment to consider other plans, but, while he stayed there in thought, he heard the rattle of pans. It decided him to stay a while longer. Apparently she was washing the cooking utensils, and that meant that she was near the close of her work for the evening. In fact, the rim of light, which showed between the door frame and the door, suddenly snapped out, and he heard her footsteps retreating.