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 pass at Seventy-second and Broadway.
Yep, she sure was a ringer for this picture." He passed 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
passing 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 passed, 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 a