The quarry, in the shape of the traveling pawn shop, directed its way
into the heart of the East Side. Presently it turned into a hiving,
narrow street, where hawkers with their push-carts in the light of
flaring, spitting gasoline banjoes were doing a thriving business. The
two cars went more slowly now. There was very little room. The
taxi almost upset a fish vendor's wheeled emporium. The vendor was
eloquent--fervently so. But the chauffeur's eyes, after an impersonal
and indifferent glance at the other, returned to the car ahead. The taxi
continued on its way, trailing fifty yards in the rear of the traveling
pawn-shop.
At the end of the block the car ahead turned the corner. As the taxi,
in turn, rounded the corner, John Bruce saw that the traveling pawn-shop
was drawn up before a small building that was nested in between two
tenements. The blood quickened in his pulse. The girl had alighted, and
was entering the small building.
“Hit it up a little to the next corner, turn it, and let me off there,”
directed John Bruce.
“I get you!” said the chauffeur.
The taxi swept past the car at the curb. Another minute and it had swung
the next corner, and was slowing down. John Bruce jumped to the ground
before the taxi stopped.
“Good-night!” he called to the chauffeur.
He waved his hand debonairly at the scowling, whiskered visage that was
watching him from the interior of the cab, and hurriedly retraced his
way back around the corner.
The traveling pawn-shop had turned and was driving away. John Bruce
moderated his pace, and sauntered on along the street. He smiled half
grimly, half contentedly to himself. The “trip to Persia” had led him
a little farther afield than Monsieur Henri de Lavergne had perhaps
counted on--or than he, John Bruce, himself had, either! But he knew now
where the most glorious woman he had ever seen in his life lived, or, at
least, was to be found again. No, it wasn't the _moon!_ To him, she was
exactly that. And he had not seen her for the last time, either! That
was what he was here for, though he wasn't so mad as to risk, or,
rather, invite an affront to begin with by so bald an act as to go to
the front door, say, and ring the bell--which would be tantamount to
informing her that he had--er--played the detective from the moment
he had left her in the car. To-morrow, perhaps, or the next day, or
whenever fate saw fit to be in a kindly mood, a meeting that possessed
all the hall-marks of being quite inadvertent offered him high hopes.
Later, if fate still were kind, he would tell her that he had followed
her, and what she would be thoroughly justified in misconstruing now,
she might then accept as the tribute to her that he meant it to be--when
she knew him better.
John Bruce was whistling softly to himself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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