Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/370

 and putting down her receiver, sat pondering this question.

"Don't yuh s'pose Keudell saw yuh beat it back here?"

"I don't think he could have. In the first place, you yourself said he had to wait to overhear our message. And in the second place, there was a crowd at the corner of Yorke Street when I came back, a crowd right north of the hotel here, for a policeman had stopped a man for speeding."

"How'd that ever hide yuh from Keudell? That guy could tail yuh a thousand miles and yuh'd never know it."

"But I had to push through this crowd, right into it, and at first I couldn't get away again. And I would surely have noticed a huge man like Keudell if he had been anywhere about. The crowd had closed in so thick that I edged toward the policeman, for I intended to tell him I was a trained nurse and ask him to help me through, as I was in a hurry."

"And did he?"

"He was too busy talking with the man he had stopped to notice me. I heard some one say that his car had made the eighteen miles from St. Thomas in a little under twenty-seven minutes, and