Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/399

 "He's a Mr. Jenson, and he said to ring him up at Madison 2995 between nine and two o'clock. Those are banking hours. And I found out the number was that of the Sixth Avenue National."

"Very good. Go on."

"Well, yesterday at four o'clock, he took a local in the subway at Twenty-third Street. Between Twenty-eighth Street and Thirty-third, an up-town express passed him. You know how, sometimes, two trains keep side by side for a short distance, exactly even, and then the express shoots ahead?"

"Yes. I've often thought of complications arising from two passengers watching each other."

"Which is exactly what happened. Directly opposite his window was a beautiful girl sitting in the express. She seemed fearfully agitated, and looked at him strangely; almost as if she recognized him, though he's sure he has never seen her before. But he had another sort of feeling—an emotion—as if somehow she was something to him,—one might call it a sudden feeling of affinity,—a real love at first sight."

"Oh, in the circumstances she felt safe enough to flirt with him, I suppose."

"Oh, that's impossible; for it seemed evident that she didn't feel safe at all,—in fact that she was in a great danger, and was so distressed that she made a mute appeal to him for help."

"Why to him?'

"To him, he thinks, perhaps too sentimentally, because she, too, felt the mysterious affinity,—whatever it is, trust in him, or something. And she asked him to help her."

Astro stared. "Asked him! How, pray? She had