Kestner stared out at the hurrying stream of faces, eager and yet unelated. He continued to peer out as the taxi-cab came to a standstill before the imperious arm of a traffic-squad officer. He watched the cross-section of suspended traffic which the same imperious arm sent shuttling across their right-of-way, like waters loosened from an opened sluice-gate.
Then, in a passing car, he caught one fleeting glimpse of a woman's face. Her beauty may have seemed no more pictorial than that of a hundred faces he had already passed. Yet there was a sudden trip and skip of the pulse as he stared out at that transitory picture made by the soft pallor of an oval face framed against the gloom of a cab-hood.
"What's up? " demanded Wilsnach as their taxi started forward with a jerk.
Kestner, who had risen, did not answer him. He was already struggling with the cab-door and calling aloud to his driver. Then he saw it was useless. An intervening tumult of traffic was sweeping them on, like a chip on a stream. The oval face and the unknown carriage were already lost in the crowd.
"What's the matter?" repeated Wilsnach, as Kestner dropped back in his seat.
For several seconds the Secret Agent's face was blank with preoccupation as they swung from Longacre Square into Forty-fourth Street, and went purring on towards the quieter areas of Fifth Avenue.
"Among other things," said Kestner, with the ghost of a sigh, "I just remembered that I'm as hungry as a hound-pup, and here's Delmonico's!"
This acknowledgment of hunger was confirmed by
