"What's all this to yuh, anyway?" she suddenly demanded. "It's so little, my dear," I airily acknowledged, "that you can do exactly as you like about it. But--" "Where's The Doc?" was her next quick question. "Where's Crotty?" I had to think fast. "They've ducked," I asserted, amazed at my own newly-discovered facility in fictioneering. "Who said they'd ducked?" "Do you know Mickey's, over there on the corner?" I ventured. She nodded as she darted across the room and threw aside the faded _peignoir_. The movement made my thoughts flash back to another and earlier scene, to the scene wherein one Vinnie Brunelle had played the leading rôle. "Latreille," I explained to the girl across the room, "dropped in at Mickey's and tipped Crotty and The Doc off, not more than a quarter of an hour ago." "And they rabbited off wit'out throwin' me a sign?" she indignantly demanded. "They did," I prevaricated. She suddenly stopped, swinging about and viewing me with open suspicion. "Where'd yuh ever know that Latreille guy?" she demanded. "Latreille worked with me, for months," I declared, speaking with more truth, in fact, than I had intended. "Then me for the tall timber!" announced that hard-faced little adventuress as she began to scramble into her clothes. "Don't you want me to get you a taxi?" I inquired, backing discreetly away until I stood in the open door. "Taxi nuttin'!" she retorted through the shower of soiled lingerie mat cascaded about her writhing white shoulders. "What d'yuh take me for, anyway? A ostrich? When I get under cover, I go there me own way, and not wit' all Brooklyn bawlin' me out!" And she went her own way. She went, indeed, much more expeditiously than I had anticipated, for in five minutes' time she was dressed and booted and hatted and scurrying off through the now darkened streets. Which trail she took and what cover she sought didn't in the least interest me once I had made sure of the fact she was faring in an opposite direction to Mickey's thirst-appeasing caravansary. But she went. She shook the dust of that house off her febrile young heels; and that was the one thing I desired of her. For that night, I knew, still held a problem or two for me which would be trying enough without the presence of the redoubtable Lady Babbie and her sanguinary bicuspid. Yet once she was clear of that house, I decided to follow her example. This, however, was not so easy as it had promised to be. For I had scarcely reached the foot of the stairway when I heard the sound of voices outside the street door. And I promptly recognized them as Crotty's and Latreille's.