o'clock. If a young man with a gripsack hailed me at the corner I
was to stop and let him get in; then I was to go on up Fifth Avenue.
If I wasn't stopped I was to drive on to Thirty-fifth Street, cut
across to Madison Avenue, down to Thirty-third Street, then back to
Fifth Avenue and past Thirty-fourth Street again, going uptown. The
guy with the gripsack caught us first crack out of the box."

"And then?" demanded the detective eagerly.

"I went on up Fifth Avenue, according to sailing orders, and the guy
inside stopped me at Sixty-seventh Street. He got out and gimme a
five-spot, telling me to go a few blocks, then turn and bring the
lady back to the Sixth Avenue 'L' at Fifty-eighth Street. I done it.
That's all. She went up the steps, and that's the last I seen of
her."

"Did she carry a small gripsack?"

"Yep. It would hold about as much as a high hat."

Explicit as the information was it led nowhere, apparently. Mr.
Birnes readily understood this much, yet there was a chance--a bare
chance--that he might trace the girl on the 'L,' in which case--anyway,
it was worth trying.

"What did she look like? How was she dressed?" he asked.

"She had on one of them blue tailor-made things with a lid to match,
and a long feather in it," the cabby answered obligingly. "She was
pretty as a--as a--she was a beaut, Cap, sort of skinny, and had all