THE MYSTERIOUS WOMAN

Mr. Birnes’ busy heels fairly spurned the pavements of Fifth Avenue as he started toward Madison Square.  Here was a long line of cabs drawn up beside the curb, some twenty or thirty in all.  The fifth from the end bore the number he sought—­Mr. Birnes chuckled; and there, alongside it, stood William Johns, swapping Billingsgate with the driver of a hansom, the while he kept one eye open for a prospective fare.  It was too easy!  Mr. Birnes paused long enough to congratulate himself upon his marvelous acumen, and then he approached the driver.

“You are William Johns?” he accused him sharply.

“That’s me, Cap,” the cabby answered readily.

“A few minutes past four o’clock this afternoon you went up Fifth Avenue, and stopped at the corner of Thirty-fourth Street to pick up a fare—­a young man.”

“Yep.”

“You drove him to the corner of Sixty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue,” the detective went on just to forestall possible denials.  “He got out there, paid you, and you went on up Fifth Avenue.”

“Far be it from me to deceive you, Cap,” responded the cabby with irritating levity.  “I done that same.”

“Who was that man?” demanded Mr. Birnes coldly.

“Search me!  I never seen him before.”

The detective regarded the cabby with accusing eyes.  Then, quite casually, he flipped open his coat and Johns caught a glimpse of a silver shield.  It might only have been accident, of course, still—­

“Now, Johns, who was the man in the cab when you stopped to pick up the second man at Thirty-fourth Street?”

“Wrong, Cap,” and the cabby grinned.  “There wasn’t any man.”

“Don’t attempt to deny—­”

“No man, Cap.  It was a woman.”

“A woman!” the detective repeated.  “A woman!”

“Sure thing—­a woman, a regular woman.  And, Cap, she was a pippin, a peachorino, a beauty bright,” he added, gratuitously.

Mr. Birnes stared thoughtfully across the street for a little while.  So there was a woman in it!  Mr. Wynne had transferred the contents of the gripsack to her, in a cab, on a crowded thoroughfare, right under his nose!

“I was a little farther down the line there,” Johns went on to explain.  “About a quarter of four o’clock, I guess, she came along.  She got in, after telling me to drive slowly up Fifth Avenue so I would pass Thirty-fourth Street five minutes or so after four 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.