“I’ll take the job,” he said, “and gladly. Maybe we should go out and celebrate right now.”
“Not now,” reproved Thara, as they crossed the lobby. “Later, when you have the money. To get to the Sans Souci, you walk to the east, two blocks. Good-night.”
Thara was turning away when she spoke and Phil turned too, hoping that the girl hadn’t vanished like Arlene. Momentarily, Phil saw an elevator with its door open, but Thara hadn’t stepped into it; the only darkish face that he saw belonged to a stolid, brawny man who looked as wide as the door itself, and his features were tawny, compared to Thara’s delicate olive.
Odd people, these New Yorkers; perhaps Phil was right in that supposition, but he shouldn’t have included Dom Yuble in that category. The Caribbean sea captain was purely a portion of Manhattan’s passing show.
Then, as the elevator door clanged shut, Phil saw Thara over by the newsstand, giving him a parting smile so thoroughly alluring that he hoped she wouldn’t vanish.
Which reverted Phil’s thoughts to Arlene as he went out the street door. Wondering if anybody chanced to remember the missing blonde, Phil glanced to his left and saw a most amazing thing.
Drawn up to the curb was an old-fashioned hansom cab, its driver half-asleep on the high box. As Phil approached and paused, the man opened one eye beneath his old plug hat and looked down. Figuring that from such an elevation the hansom driver should have witnessed much. Phil called up:
“See anything of a girl about an hour ago? A blonde, wearing lilacs - like this?”
Plucking the blossom from his buttonhole, Phil showed it, then tossed the wilted flower away. The hackie waved his whip toward a doorway at his right; then wagged it across the street toward the border of the park.
“She came out and somebody called a victoria for her,” stated the hansom driver. “She was kind of breathless, like she needed fresh air. This hansom was too cramped for her; that’s why she took an open carriage.”
“Where did she go?”
The man gave Phil a stare, then gestured with his whip.
“For a ride in the park,” the man stated. “Where else would she want to take a carriage?”
Nodding to prove he’d learned something, Phil started along Central Park South. Impressed with the very sudden notion that Arlene might really be the banshee, Phil thought of turning back and asking the hansom driver what else the girl had been wearing besides lilacs. It struck Phil then that Arlene certainly wouldn’t take to sylvan costumery until she reached her favorite pool.
Wondering about that pool and its allure, Phil went west instead of east. Failing to see the name of the Hotel Sans Souci, he paused to make inquiry. Phil was right in front of a hotel called the Parkside House, when he witnessed what seemed a trifling incident.
A man with a large suitcase was coming from the doorway brushing away a bellboy who offered to carry the bag to a waiting cab. Poor policy on the man’s part, for of a sudden, his burden became too heavy, and he sagged toward the sidewalk. Phil caught him as the bag clattered, steadied the fellow and looked at his thin, peaked face.
“Very sorry,” the man muttered. He gave Phil a look with gray eyes that were watery, but appealing. “I guess - guess I was just a bit dizzy.”
“Blind staggers,” diagnosed Phil. “Ease your head back. I’ll get you into the cab.”
There was something about the man’s long face that was vaguely familiar to Phil. Drawn though they were, those features had a trace of the aristocratic. As Phil helped the fellow to the cab, the man fumbled in his pocket and a wallet fell out, spilling some loose papers. Phil recovered them and in the light of the marquee, saw both a calling card and an addressed envelope that bore the man’s name.
That name was Winslow Ames.
The door man now was giving Phil a hand with Mr. Ames. In his turn, Ames put away the wallet and its papers, to bring out a smaller envelope that contained a railroad ticket.
“Penn Station,” he muttered. “Going to Boston.”
“Boston?” queried the door man. “You want Grand Central.”
“Couldn’t get a ticket on the regular train,” argued Ames, apparently recuperated. “Have to take the car that gets picked up at Penn by the through train from Washington. Pennsylvania Station” - this was to the driver - “and take it slowly. I’ll feel better if you do.”
The cab pulled away and another drew up. Muttering to himself, the door man opened the cab door, thinking Phil wanted it.
“Oughtn’t to have let him go,” the door man was saying, referring to Ames. “He may be wrong about that sleeper. Somebody ought to have gone along with him.”
That gave Phil an idea of his own. He took the cab and told the driver to follow the one ahead. Rather than have it seem that he was trailing somebody, Phil explained:
“A friend of mine. He isn’t feeling well, but he wouldn’t hear of my going to the station with him. I’m going anyway.”
It wasn’t just a good deed on Phil’s part. He wanted to see some of New York anyway. It happened that he was going to have that wish fulfilled. Both cabs did a lot of turning around corners and finally wheeled through a gateway composed of two great stone pillars.
“Your friend must be going to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street,” announced Phil’s driver, gesturing ahead, “considering that his cab is going through the park. That’s the only station, the way he’s headed.”
Odd, thought Phil, that this should happen. Intrigued as well as puzzled, Phil kept his gaze glued to the cab ahead and therefore didn’t notice that a third such vehicle had fallen into the procession.
Except for its driver, the last cab seemed empty, but it wasn’t. Riding in it was a figure cloaked entirely in black.
That passenger could only be The Shadow!
CENTRAL PARK boasts perhaps a dozen miles of driveways which form what has been termed an informal pattern.
If Phil Harley had heard the term “informal” thus applied, he could well have regarded it a synonym for “confusing” because the pattern became exactly such.
All the drives were winding affairs that had a habit of being one-way, though they seemed too broad for that. Hence cars were passing one another in a puzzling and unorthodox fashion, at least from the stranger’s viewpoint.
There were traffic lights at places where none seemed needed; these were to let pedestrians or horse-back riders cross the drives, though Phil didn’t realize it. Mixed with the stream of automobiles were occasional carriages or hacks, forming part of the general procession.
Keeping track of direction was impossible, particularly at night. The passing scene was frequently blacked out by slopes, even cliffs that flanked the drive, with plenty of attendant trees. Emerging after a long curve, Phil could not tell on what side of the park the various tall buildings were located when he saw them again.
Not only the lights in Central Park, but those around it became a kaleidoscopic whirl and as for tracing things by watching the crossings of the driveways, that was impossible too. Many of the drives forked apart or flowed into one another and they crossed the underpasses on bridges that couldn’t be distinguished in the dark.
One thing, however, was certain.
Phil’s cab was getting the runaround.
“That friend of yours,” the driver growled. “He can’t seem to make up his mind. Where is he going - to the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street Station, or back to Grand Central?”
“Neither,” replied Phil. “He said he was going to the Pennsylvania Station.”
“He’s more likely to wind up at the Jersey Central Ferry,” the driver decided. “Unless” - Phil could see narrowed eyes in the front seat mirror - “unless maybe he doesn’t want you to tag along.”
Before Phil could answer that one, the cab ahead took an unexpected spurt. It was gone around the next curve like a whippet and if Phil’s driver hadn’t answered the challenge automatically, he would have been left far behind. As it was, the pickup of Phil’s cab was a trifle too late, or would have been, but for an added factor.