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Miss Smith to a doctor’s office near by to have a sprained wrist bandaged; and thence home in a hired automobile.

Her runabout to a Yonkers repair shop and garage.

Mr. Goebel, with lamentations, to the office of an attorney making a specialty of handling damage suits, thence home by train with the seven members of his family party, all uninjured as to their limbs and members but in a highly distracted state nervously.

Mr. Goebel’s car to another repair shop and garage.

The traffic policeman on duty in Getty Square to the station house to make a report of the fifth smash-up personally officered by him within eight hours–on a Sunday his casualty list would have been longer, but this was a week day, when pleasure travel was less fraught with highway perilousness.

It so happened that Mullinix came to town from Washington next morning and, following his custom, rang up his unpaid but none the less valued aid to inquire whether he might come a-calling. No, he might not, Miss Smith being confined to her room with cold compresses on her injured wrist, but he might render a service for her if so minded–and he was. To him, then, over the wire Miss Smith stated her requirements.

“I want you please to go to this address”–giving it–“and see whether you find there a Mrs. Janet Vinsolving, a widow. I rather imagine the place may be a boarding house, though I won’t be sure as to that. It will not be necessary for you to see her in person; in fact I’d rather you did not. What I want you to do is to learn whether she is still there, and if so how long she expects to stay there, and generally anything you can about her movements. She went there only three days ago and inasmuch as she has a reputation in her former home for keeping very much to herself this may be a more difficult job than it sounds. But do the best you can, won’t you, and then notify me of the results by telephone? No, it is a personal affair–nothing to do with any of our official undertakings. I’ll tell you more about it when I see you. I expect I shall be able to receive visitors in a day or two; just now I feel a bit shaken up and unstrung. That’s all, and thank you ever so much.”

Within an hour he had her on the telephone again.

“Hello!” she said. “Yes, this is Miss Smith. Oh, it’s you, is it? Well, what luck?… Oh, so it was a boarding house, after all…. And you found her there?… No? Then where is she?… What? Where did you say? Bellevue!… I knew it, I knew it, something told me!… No, no, never mind my ravings! Go on, please, go on!… Yes, all right. Now then, listen please: You jump in a taxi and get here to my apartments as soon as you can. I’ll be dressed and ready when you arrive to go over there with you…. What?… Oh, bother the doctor’s instructions. It’s only a sprain anyhow and I feel perfectly fit by now, honestly I do … tell you I’d get up out of my dying bed to go…. Yes, indeed, it is important–much more important than you think! Come on for me, I’ll be waiting.”

When fifteen minutes later the perplexed Mullinix halted a taxi at the Deansworth Studio Building she was at the curbing, her left arm in a sling and her eyes ablaze with barely controlled emotions. Before he could move to get out and help her in she was already in.

“Bellevue Hospital, psychopathic ward,” he told the driver as she climbed nimbly inside.

As the taxi started she turned to Mullinix, demanding: “Now tell it to me all over again. When you are through, then I’ll explain to you why I am so interested.”

“Well,” he said, “there isn’t so very much to tell. The address you gave me turned out to be a boarding house just as you suspected it might–a second-rate place but apparently highly respectable, kept by a Mrs. Sheehan. It’s been under the same management at the same place for a good many years. It wasn’t very much trouble for me to find out what you wanted to know, because the whole place was in turmoil after what had happened just an hour or so before I got there. And when it developed that I had come to inquire about the cause of all the excitement every old-lady boarder in the house wanted to tell me about it all at the same time.