t on the sidewalk. It was the taxi.

"You know where to go, don't you?" she said to the chauffeur, as the cab
drew up at the curb, and the man leaned out and opened the door.

"Yes'm," he said.

"Please drive fast, then," she said, as she stepped in.

The taxi shot out from the curb, and rattled forward at a rapid pace.
Rhoda Gray settled back on the cushions. A half whimsical, half weary
little smile touched her lips. It was much easier, and infinitely safer,
this mode of travel, than that of her earlier experience that evening;
but, earlier that evening, she had had no one to go to a cab rank
for her, and she had not dared to appear in the open and hail one for
herself. The smile vanished, and the lips became, pursed and grim. Her
mind was back on that daring, and perhaps a little dangerous, plan, that
she meant to put into execution. Block after block was traversed. It
was a long way uptown, but the chauffeur's initial and generous tip was
bearing fruit. The man was losing no time.

Rhoda Gray calculated that they had been a little under half an hour in
making the trip, when the taxi finally drew up and stopped at a corner,
and the chauffeur, again leaning out, opened the door.

"Wait for me," she instructed, and handed the man another tip--and, with
a glance about her to get her location, she hurried around the corner,
and headed up the cross street.

She had only a block now to go to reach the Hayden-Bond mansion on the
corner of Fifth Avenue ahead--less than that to reach the garage,
which opened on the cross street here. She had little fear of personal
identification now. Here in this residential section and at this hour of
night, it was like a silent and deserted city; even Fifth Avenue, just
ahead, for all its lights, was one of the loneliest places at this hour
in all New York. True, now and then, a car might race up or down the
great thoroughfare, or a belated pedestrian's footsteps ring and echo
hollow on the pavement, where but a few hours before the traffic-squad
struggled valiantly, and sometimes vainly, with the congestion--but that
was all.

She could make out the Hayden-Bond mansion on the corner ahead of her
now, and now she was abreast of the rather ornate and attached little
building, that was obviously the garage. She drew the key from her
pocket, and glanced around her. There was no one in sight. She stepped
swiftly to the small door that flanked the big double ones where the
cars went in