Warrington had kept silent during the visit, I noticed, and seemed relieved when it was over.  I could not imagine that he was known here inasmuch as they treated him quite as they treated us.

Apparently, though, he had no relish for a possible report of the excursion to get to Miss Winslow’s ears.  He was the first to leave, as Garrick, after paying for our refreshments and making a neat remark or two about the tasteful way in which the gambling room was furnished, rescued our hats and coats from the negro servant, and said good-night with a promise to drop in again.

“What would Mrs. de Lancey think of that?” Garrick could not help saying, as we reached the street.

Warrington gave a nervous little forced laugh, not at all such as he might have given had Mrs. de Lancey not been the aunt of the girl who had entered his life.

Then he caught himself and said hastily, “I don’t care what she thinks.  It’s none of her—–­”

He cut the words short, as if fearing to be misinterpreted either way.

For several squares he plodded along silently, then, as we had accomplished the object of the evening, excused himself, with the request that we keep him fully informed of every incident in the case.

“Warrington doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve,” commented Garrick as we bent our steps to our own, or rather his, apartment, “but it is evident enough that he is thinking all the time of Violet Winslow.”

CHAPTER VII

THE MOTOR BANDIT

Early the next morning, the telephone bell began to ring violently.  The message must have been short, for I could not gather from Garrick’s reply what it was about, although I could tell by the startled look on his face that something unexpected had happened.

“Hurry and finish dressing, Tom,” he called, as he hung up the receiver.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, from my room, still struggling with my tie.

“Warrington was severely injured in a motor-car accident late last night, or rather early this morning, near Tuxedo.”

“Near Tuxedo?” I repeated incredulously.  “How could he have got up there?  It was midnight when we left him in New York.”

“I know it.  Apparently he must have wanted to see Miss Winslow.  She is up there, you know.  I suppose that in order to be there this morning, early, he decided to start after he left us.  I thought he seemed anxious to get away.  Besides, you remember he took that letter yesterday afternoon, and I totally forgot to ask him for it last night.  I’ll wager it was on account of that slanderous letter that he wanted to go, that he wanted to explain it to her as soon as he could.”

There had been no details in the hasty message over the wire, except that Warrington was now at the home of a Doctor Mead, a local physician in a little town across the border of New York and New Jersey.  The more I thought about it, the more I felt that it was extremely unlikely that it could have been an accident, after all.  Might it not have been the result of an attack or a trap laid by some strong-arm man who had set out to get him and had almost succeeded in accomplishing his purpose of “getting him right,” to use the vernacular of the class?