A bell clanged and the tram set off again.
“Lost him,” Alec observed hopefully.
“We’ll catch the next streetcar,” Lambert proposed.
“That’s no good,” Daisy objected. “He could get off anywhere. Maybe he’s going to the elevated railway on Sixth Avenue. If we run …”
“There he is!” exclaimed Lambert, pointing. “Over there, just stepping up onto the sidewalk. He only crossed the street. After him!”
A sudden rush of traffic held them up. Daisy was on tenterhooks, sure they would lose Pitt. Even on tiptoe, she could see no sign of him among the crowds on the opposite pavement. But when at last the policeman on point duty let them cross, Lambert swore he still saw their quarry ahead.
“Alec, can you … Oh, I see him. Just a glimpse between all the people. Where is everyone going at this time in the morning?” she demanded crossly, narrowly avoiding another pedestrian.
“Perhaps they’re all pursuing suspected murderers,” Alec suggested dryly. “You do realize, Daisy, that I have no authority whatsoever to arrest your man whatever crimes he may have committed.”
“I know. That’s why I asked Mr. Lambert to come.”
“Who, me? I can’t arrest him!”
“You could if he crossed into another state, couldn’t you? You said something about crossing state lines to escape the police being a federal offence.”
“Um, sort of,” Lambert said cautiously. “To escape prosecution, though, not just questioning. I think. Gilligan and Rosenblatt may want to grill Pitt, but we don’t know for sure that he’s committed an indictable offence.”
“I’msure.” Daisy would have explained her deductions, but she needed her breath and her attention for the chase. At least, however unconvinced, Lambert and Alec were keeping pace as the bowler hat continued north on Seventh Avenue at a fast walk.
They crossed Twenty-sixth, Twenty-seventh, Twenty-ninth, and Thirtieth Streets. Daisy spared a thought for the missing Twenty-fourth, Twenty-fifth and Twenty-eighth. If they must have such a dull, though logical, system of naming streets, at least they ought to be consistent about it. But as they neared Thirty-first, her guess as to Pitt’s aim turned into a certainty.
“He’s going to Pennsylvania Station!” she said. “He’s leaving New York. I bet he’s going home. All we have to do is get on the same train, and as soon as he gets to the next state you can arrest him.”
“I don’t have a warrant,” moaned Lambert. “All I’m supposed to be doing is looking after you, not arresting people.”
“Have you got your credentials on you?” Alec asked.
Lambert felt his inside breast pocket. “Ye-es.”
“Then you can at least request assistance from the local police, wherever we run him to ground, until you’ve consulted Whitaker, Washington, or the New York authorities. Come on, having come so far, we ought at least to tryto stand close enough to him in the ticket line to overhear his destination.”
“You are a sport, darling!” Daisy told him.
He gave her a rueful grin. “I must be mad.”
“That’s all right. You haven’t got Mr. Crane or the A.C. overlooking your every move here.”
“Thank heaven!” said Alec fervently.
They were crossing Thirty-first Street when Wilbur Pitt paused on the steps going up to the station and looked back. Daisy instinctively ducked her head.
She didn’t think he would recognize her. This morning in the lobby he had marched straight ahead, intent on leaving the hotel, glancing neither to left nor right. In the Flatiron Building, though he had turned his head her way when she called out to him to stop, he had appeared far too distraught to take in what he was seeing. If they had passed each other in the hotel before she knew who he was, he might remember her, she supposed, but to catch sight of a fellow resident crossing a street not far from the hotel ought not to alarm him. Still, it seemed better not to let him glimpse her face.
When she looked up again, he was gone.
“What if he already has a return ticket?” she exclaimed, hurrying her step. “He’ll go straight to the platform and we’ll never find him.”
Lambert broke into a run, dodging through the crowds approaching and leaving the station. He hurdled the steps and disappeared between two of the grandiose pillars.
“He’s hot on the trail,” said Alec.
“Yes, he seems to have decided the pleasure of the chase outweighs the terror of actually catching Pitt and having to do something about it.”
