What would the big types say?  Nothing!  Miss Van Rolsen had managed to keep the strange affair of her niece’s disappearance out of the columns of the papers.  They knew nothing about it as yet—­Only a single little item in the shipping news, in fine print, which suddenly caught his gaze bore in any way, and that a remote one, upon her niece and her affairs.  Mr. Heatherbloom regarded it with dull glance.  The few lines meant nothing to him—­then; later he had cause to turn to them with abrupt wondering avidity.  Now his eyes swept with simulated interest the general news of the day; he professed to read cable dispatches.

But an odd reaction seemed to have settled on him; the excitement of the chase became, for the moment, forgotten.  The scope of his mental visuality no longer included the figure of the agent from the private detective bureau.  An anxiety more poignant moved him; his thoughts centered on that other matter—­the cause of Miss Van Rolsen’s apprehensions—­the while those emotions that had held him a listener behind the curtain in her library again stirred in his breast.  He had not played the eavesdropper for any selfish purpose or through a sense of personal apprehension.  The sudden realization of his own danger, had, perforce, awakened in him the need for quick action if he would save himself.

If?  What chance had he?  But for one compelling reason, one consuming purpose, he would not have fled at all; he would have faced them, instead!  But he had work to do—­he!  A fugitive, a logical candidate for the prison cell!  Ironical situation!  Even now he heard a voice at his elbow.

“Mr. Heatherbloom!” Some one spoke suddenly to him and he wheeled with abrupt swift fierceness.

“Well, are you going to eat me up?” the voice laughed.

He looked into the pert face of Jane—­the maid with the provoking nose—­who had been at Miss Van Rolsen’s.  She had got on at the other end of the car at the last station, and after waiting a few moments for him to see her, had moved toward him, or a seat at his side just then vacated by some one preparing to leave.  Mr. Heatherbloom’s face cleared; he banished the belligerent expression.

“You look edible enough!” he said with forced jocularity.

“Indeed?” she retorted, surprised at such gallantry from one who had heretofore not deigned to pay her compliments.  “I’ll have to tell my husband about you.”  Playfully.  “But how are things at Miss Van Rolsen’s?  Anything new?”

Mr. Heatherbloom murmured something about the customary routine; then, even as he spoke, became conscious of a sudden new disconcerting circumstance.  The tracks for the up and the down trains on the elevated had widely separated and ran now on the extreme sides of the broad thoroughfare.  From his side of the car the young man was afforded a view of the pavement below, between the two sustaining iron structures.  A chill shot through him and his smile became set.  Gazing down he discerned, on the street beneath and a little to one side of them, a motor-car, speeding fast, apparently bent on keeping up with them.