Page:The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.djvu/52

10 where the cab had stopped on the night of Whyte's murder.

"Ah!" said the detective to himself, as he stood in the shadow on the opposite side of the street. "You're going to have a look at it, are you?—I wouldn't, if I were you—it's dangerous."

Fitzgerald stood for a few minutes at the corner, and then walked up Collins Street. When he got to the cabstand, opposite the Melbourne Club, still suspecting he was followed, he hailed a hansom, and drove away in the direction of Spring Street. Gorby was rather perplexed at this sudden move, but without delay he hailed another cab, and told the driver to follow the first till it stopped.

"Two can play at that game," he said, settling himself back in his cab, "and I'll get the better of you, clever as you are—and you are clever," he went on in a tone of admiration, as he looked round the luxurious hansom, "to choose such a convenient place for a murder; no disturbance and plenty of time for escape after you had finished; it's a pleasure going after a chap like you, instead of men who tumble down like ripe fruit, and ain't got any brains to keep their crime quiet."

While the detective thus soliloquized, his cab, following on the trail of the other, had turned down Spring Street, and was being driven rapidly along the Wellington Parade, in the direction of East Melbourne. It then turned up Powlett Street, at which Mr. Gorby exulted.

"Ain't so clever as I thought," he said to himself. "Shows his nest right off, without any attempt to hide it."

The detective, however, had reckoned without his host, for the cab in front kept driving on, through an interminable maze of streets, until it seemed as if Brian was determined never to stop the whole night.

"Look 'ere, sir!" cried Gorby's cabman, looking through his trap-door in the roof of the hansom, "'ow long's this 'ere game a-goin' to larst? My 'oss is knocked up, 'e is, and 'is blessed old legs a-givin' away under 'im!"

"Go on! go on!" answered the detective, impatiently; "I'll pay you well!"

The cabman's spirits were raised by this, and by dint of coaxing and a liberal use of the silk, he managed to get his jaded horse up to a pretty good pace. They were in