"Very well," she quietly announced. "I'll take her home. I'll take you both home." And at this the old man seemed immensely relieved. "Where is it you want to go?" I rather impatiently demanded of him. For I'd decided to get them away from there, for Mary's sake, before the inevitable patrolman or reporter happened along. "On the other side of Brooklyn," explained the bereft one, with a vague hand-wave toward the east. I had to push back the crowd again, before I was able to gather the limp form up from its asphalted resting-place. "And what's your name?" I demanded as the old man came shuffling along beside us on our way to the waiting car. "Crotty," he announced. "Zachary Crotty." It wasn't until I'd placed the injured girl in the softly-upholstered car-seat that that name of "Crotty," sent like a torpedo across the open spaces of distraction, exploded against the hull-plates of memory. Crotty! The very name of Crotty took my thoughts suddenly winging back to yet another street-accident, an accident in which I myself had figured so actively and so unfortunately. For Crotty was the name of the man, I remembered, who had confirmed my chauffeur Latreille's verdict as to the victim of that never-to-be-forgotten Hallow-e'en affair. Crotty was the individual who had brought word to Latreille that we had really killed a man. And Crotty was not a remarkably common name. And now, oddly enough, he was figuring in another accident of almost the same nature. Something prompted me to reach in and feel the hand of the still comatose girl. That hand, I noticed, was warm to the touch. Then I turned and inspected the venerable-looking old man who was now weeping volubly into a large cotton handkerchief. "You'll have to give us your street and number," I told him, as a mask to cover that continued inspection of mine. He did so, between sobs. And as he did so I failed to detect any trace of actual tears on his face. What was more, I felt sure that the eye periodically concealed by the noisily-flourished handkerchief was a chronically roving eye, an unstable eye, an eye that seemed averse to meeting your own honestly inquiring glance. That discovery, or perhaps I ought to say that suspicion, caused me to turn to Mary, who was already in her place in the driving-seat. "Wouldn't it be better if I went with you?" I asked her, stung to the heart by the mute suffering which I could only too plainly see on her milk-white face. "No," she told me as she motioned for the girl's uncle to climb into the car. "This is something I've got to do myself." "And it's something that'll have to be paid for, and well paid for," declaimed our silvery-haired old friend as he stowed away his cotton handkerchief and took up his slightly triumphant position in that Nile-green roadster.