Adventure stories; Detective and mystery stories; Missing persons -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
We decided to leave the little car in the garage and take a taxi
instead. We found one without difficulty, and at two-thirty we were in
the park and on our way to the 72nd Street Gate. As we approached the
Park Restaurant there, Larry stuck his head cautiously out of the
window, as being less likely to be recognized than I. A moment later
he was pounding on the glass to attract the driver’s attention.
The taxi drew up, Larry flung the door open, and in a moment Moore and
I had gripped hands again. The pleasure of that handshake brought home
to me the fact that I had missed him badly of late.
Larry told the driver to take us around the Park a couple of times
and, as we picked up speed again, Moore gripped my arm.
“Gad, it’s good to see you again, Clayton,” he cried, “but I have not
time to tell how good, old man. For I’m hoping big things of to-night.
I believe this is our chance to round up the lot of them. And we’ve a
lot to talk over first.”
I nodded. “Go ahead then,” I told him.
“All right. First, about to-night then. Vining is coming for me at
seven. I thought at first of letting Captain Peters in on the whole
thing. But he’d want to have a lot of plain-clothes men around here,
easily recognized as detectives. And Vining is nobody’s fool. Of
course he may suspect me. His turning up like that and catching you in
his house looks like it. But that might be a coincidence, or he might
have one of his faithful henchmen watching his house—it’s quite on the
cards when a man plays the sort of a game he seems to be playing—and
the watcher may have seen you and Larry go in and sent for Vining. At
any rate, there’s nothing but coincidence to connect me with you or
your search of his house. And his suspicion is a chance we’ve got to
take.”
“Pretty desperate position for you if he does suspect you,” I pointed
out.
Moore laughed. “No worse than lots of others we’ll have to take in
this business. It’s all part of the game. But here’s my idea. The
thing we want to accomplish to-night is to discover the location of
this hang-out, where they give these parties. If we do that, we can
round up the gang at our leisure afterwards. I’ll be blindfolded and
probably won’t have the faintest idea where they’re taking me. So I
want to know whether you’ll follow and find out where they do take me.
Of course it’s a bit risky——”
“Sure,” I answered, in Larry’s best colloquial style, “I’m running a
helluva lot of risk following you, after you’ve poked your head into
the lion’s mouth like that.”
“Well, then,” Moore went on, “Vining’s coming at seven, and I think
you ought to be hanging around in the neighborhood by six-thirty at
the latest, in case he comes a little early. You ought to have a
high-powered car—rent one if necessary—and have it well out of sight.
I’ll try to keep Vining for a moment or two—give him a drink or
something—and that’ll give you time to get ready after you see him.
Better get a good driver or drive yourself.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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