“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 sorts of hair on her head—­brownish, goldish sort of hair.  She was about twenty-two or three, maybe, and—­and—­Cap, she was the goods, that’s all.”

In the course of a day a thousand women, more or less, answering that description in a general sort of way, ride back and forth on the elevated trains.  Mr. Birnes sighed as he remembered this; still it might produce results.  Then came another idea.

“Did you happen to look in the cab after the young woman left it?” he inquired.

“No.”

“Had any fares since?”

“No.”

Mr. Birnes opened the door of the closed cab and glanced in.  Perhaps there might be a stray glove, a handkerchief, some more definite clew than this vague description.  He scrutinized the inside of the vehicle carefully; there was nothing.  Yes, by Jingo, here was something—­a white streak under the edge of the cushion on the seat!  Mr. Birnes’ hopeful fingers fished it out.  It was a white envelope, sealed and—­and addressed to him!

If you are as clever as I imagine you are, you will find this.  My address is No. ——­ East Thirty-seventh Street.  I shall be pleased to see you if you will call.  E. VAN CORTLANDT WYNNE.

It was most disconcerting, really.

CHAPTER VII

A WINGED MESSENGER

A snow-white pigeon dropped down out of an azure sky and settled on a top-most girder of the great Singer Building.  For a time it rested there, with folded pinions, in a din of clanging hammers; and a workman far out on a delicately balanced beam of steel paused in his labors to regard the bird with friendly eyes.  The pigeon returned his gaze unafraid.

“Well, old chap, if I had as little trouble getting up here and down again as you do I wouldn’t mind the job,” the workman remarked cheerfully.

The pigeon cooed an answer.  The steel worker extended a caressing hand, whereupon the bird rose swiftly, surely, with white wings widely stretched, circled once over the vast steel structure, then darted away to the north.  The workman watched the snow-white speck until it was lost against the blue sky, then returned to his labors.