Quick Action

He overtook and passed her at Sixth Avenue, and managed to glance at her without being offensive. To his consternation, she was touching her tear-stained eyes with her handkerchief. She did not notice him.

What could be the matter? With what mystery was he already in touch?

Tremendously interested he fell back a few paces and lighted a cigarette, allowing her to pass him; then he followed her. Never before in his life had he done such a scandalous thing.

On Broadway she hailed a taxi, got into it, and sped uptown. There was another taxi available; Green took it and gave the driver a five dollar tip to keep the first taxi in view.

Which was very easy, for it soon stopped at a handsome apartment house on Park Avenue; the girl sprang out, and entered the building almost running.

For a moment George Z. Green thought that all was lost. But the taxi she had taken remained, evidently waiting for her; and sure enough, in a few minutes out she came, hurrying, enveloped in a rough tweed travelling coat and carrying a little satchel. Slam! went the door of her taxi; and away she sped, and Green after her in his taxi.

Again the chase proved to be very short. Her taxi stopped at the Pennsylvania Station; out she sprang, paid the driver, and hurried straight for the station restaurant, Green following at a fashionable lope.

She took a small table by a window; Green took the next one. It was not because she noticed him and found his gaze offensive, but because she felt a draught that she rose and took the table behind Green, exactly where he could not see her unless he twisted his neck into attitudes unseemly.

He wouldn't do such things, being really a rather nice young man; and it was too late for him to change his table without attracting her attention, because the waiter already had brought him whatever he had ordered for tea – muffins, buns, crumpets – he neither knew nor cared.

So he ate them with jam, which he detested; and drank his tea and listened with all his ears for the slightest movement behind him which might indicate that she was leaving.

Only once did he permit himself to turn around, under pretense of looking for a waiter; and he saw two blue eyes still brilliant with unshed tears and a very lovely but unhappy mouth all ready to quiver over its toast and marmalade.

What on earth could be the matter with that girl? What terrible tragedy could it be that was still continuing to mar her eyes and twitch her sensitive, red lips?

Green, sipping his tea, trembled pleasantly all over as he realised that at last he was setting his foot upon the very threshold of Romance. And he determined to cross that threshold if neither good manners, good taste, nor the police interfered.

And what a wonderful girl for his leading lady! What eyes! What hair! What lovely little hands, with the gloves hastily rolled up from the wrist! Why should she be unhappy? He'd like to knock the block off any man who —

Green came to himself with a thrill of happiness: her pretty voice was sounding in exquisite modulations behind him as she asked the waiter for m-more m-marmalade.

In a sort of trance, Green demolished bun after bun. Normally, he loathed the indigestible. After what had seemed to him an interminable length of time, he ventured to turn around again in pretense of calling a waiter.

Her chair was empty!

At first he thought she had disappeared past all hope of recovery; but the next instant he caught sight of her hastening out toward the ticket boxes.

Flinging a five-dollar bill on the table, he hastily invited the waiter to keep the change; sprang to his feet, and turned to seize his overcoat. It was gone from the hook where he had hung it just behind him.

Astonished, he glanced at the disappearing girl, and saw his overcoat over her arm. For a moment he supposed that she had mistaken it for her own ulster, but no! She was wearing her own coat, too.

A cold and sickening sensation assailed the pit of Green's stomach. Was it not a mistake, after all? Was this lovely young girl a professional criminal? Had she or some of her band observed Green coming out of the bank and thrusting a fat wallet into the inside pocket of his overcoat?

He was walking now, as fast as he was thinking, keeping the girl in view amid the throngs passing through the vast rotunda.

When she stopped at a ticket booth he entered the brass railed space behind her.

She did not appear to know exactly where she was going, for she seemed by turns distrait and agitated; and he heard her ask the ticket agent when the next train left for the extreme South.

Learning that it left in a few minutes, and finding that she could secure a stateroom, she took it, paid for it, and hastily left without a glance behind her at Green.

Meanwhile Green had very calmly slipped one hand into the breast pocket of his own overcoat, where it trailed loosely over her left arm, meaning to extract his wallet without anybody observing him. The wallet was not there. He was greatly inclined to run after her, but he didn't. He watched her depart, then:

"Is there another stateroom left on the Verbena Special?" he inquired of the ticket agent, coolly enough.

"One. Do you wish it?"

"Yes."

The ticket agent made out the coupons and shoved the loose change under the grille, saying:

"Better hurry, sir. You've less than a minute."

He ran for his train and managed to swing aboard just as the coloured porters were closing the vestibules and the train was in motion.

A trifle bewildered at what he had done, and by the rapidity with which he had done it, he sank down in the vacant observation car to collect his thoughts.

He was on board the Verbena Special – the southern train-de-luxe – bound for Jacksonville, St. Augustine, Palm Beach, Verbena Inlet, or Miami – or for Nassau, Cuba, and the remainder of the West Indies – just as he chose.

He had no other luggage than a walking-stick. Even his overcoat was in possession of somebody else. That was the situation that now faced George Z. Green.

But as the train emerged from the river tube, and he realised all this, he grew calmer; and the calmer he grew the happier he grew.

He was no longer on the threshold of Romance; he had crossed it, and already he was being whirled away blindly into the Unusual and the Unknown!

Exultingly he gazed out of the windows upon the uninspiring scenery of New Jersey. A wonderful sense of physical lightness and mental freedom took delightful possession of him. Opportunity had not beckoned him in vain. Chance had glanced sideways at him, and he had recognised the pretty flirt. His was certainly some brain!

And now, still clinging to the skirts of Chance, he was being whisked away, pell mell, headlong toward Destiny, in the trail of a slender, strange young girl who had swiped his overcoat and who seemed continually inclined to tears.

The incident of the overcoat no longer troubled him. That garment of his was not unlike the rough travelling coat she herself wore. And it might have been natural to her, in her distress of mind and very evident emotion, to have seized it by mistake and made off with it, forgetting that she still wore her own.

Of course it was a mistake pure and simple. He had only to look at the girl and understand that. One glance at her sweet, highbred features was sufficient to exonerate her as a purloiner of gentlemen's garments.

Green crossed his legs, folded his arms, and reflected. The overcoat was another and most important element in this nascent Romance.

The difficulty lay in knowing how to use the overcoat to advantage in furthering and further complicating a situation already delightful.

Of course he could do the obvious: he could approach her and take off his hat and do the well-bred and civil and explain to her the mistake.

But suppose she merely said: "I'm sorry," handed over his coat, and continued to read her magazine. That would end it. And it mustn't end until he found out why she had emerged with tears in her beautiful eyes from the abode of the Princess Zimbamzim.

Besides, he was sure of getting his coat, his wallet, and its contents. His name and address were in the wallet; also both were sewed inside the inner pocket of the overcoat.

What would ultimately happen would be this: sooner or later she'd come to, wake up, dry her pretty eyes, look about, and find that she had two overcoats in her possession.

It would probably distress her dreadfully, particularly when she discovered the wallet and the money. But, wherever she was going, as soon as she reached there she'd send overcoat and money back to his address – doubtless with a pretty and contrite note of regret.

Yes, but that wouldn't do! What good would the overcoat and the money be to him, if he were South and she shipped them North? And yet he was afraid to risk an abrupt ending to his Romance by explaining to her the mistake.

No; he'd merely follow her for the present. He couldn't help it very well, being aboard the same train. So it would not be difficult to keep his eye on her as well as his overcoat, and think out at his leisure how best to tend, guard, cherish, and nourish the delicate and unopened bud of Romance.