tons
and patches around the pockets. The other was a taxicab driver. Both
had the uncertain gait of men who by occupation are unused to anything
stationary under them, and each eyed the other suspiciously.

The motorman claimed priority by a nose, so I took him first into my
private office. His story, shorn of his own opinions at the time and
later, was as follows:

On the night in question, Thursday of the week before, he took his car
out of the barn for the eleven o'clock run. Barney was his conductor.
They went from the barn, at Hays Street, down-town, and then started out
for Wynton. The controller blew out, and two or three things went wrong:
all told they lost forty minutes. They got to Wynton at five minutes
after two; their time there was one-twenty-five.

The car went to the bad again at Wynton, and he and Barney tinkered with
it until two-forty. They got it in shape to go back to the barn, but
that was all. Just as they were ready to start, a passenger got on, a
woman, alone: a small woman with a brown veil. She wore a black dress or
a suit--he was vague about everything but the color, and he noticed her
especially because she was fidgety and excited. Half a block farther a
man boarded the car, and sat across from the woman. Barney said
afterward that the man tried twice to speak to the woman, but she looked
away each time. No, he hadn't heard what he said.

The man got out when the car went into the barn, but the woman stayed
on. He and Barney got another car and took it out, and the woman went
with them. She made a complete round trip this time, going out to Wynton
and back to the end of the line down-town. It was just daylight when she
got off at last, at First and Day Streets.

Asked if he had thought at the time that the veiled woman was young or
old, he said he had thought she was probably middle-aged. Very young or
very old women would not put in the night riding in a street-car. Yes,
he had had men who rode around a couple of times at night, mostly to
sober up before they went home. But he never saw a woman do it before.

I took his name and address and thanked him. The chauffeur came next,
and his story was equally pertinent.

On the night of the previous Thursday he had been engaged to take a sick
woman from a down-town hotel to a house at Bellwood. The woman's husband
was with her, and they went slowly to avoid jolting. It was after twelve
when he drove away from the house and started home. A