Ronicky Doone Part 8

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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s at Seventy-second and Broadway.

Yep, she sure was a ringer for this picture." He pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed, 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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, pa.s.sing 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 cras.h.i.+ng 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?"