I asked to be connected to police headquarters, only to be told that Captain Sullivan wasn’t there. I left a message that Miss Murphy was home but planning to spend the night with Bess Houdini, then I called his apartment. Nobody answered there, so I decided I had done all I could, and set off back up to Harlem. I had just turned onto Sixth Avenue when a furious honking of an automobile horn made me look around. The auto came to an abrupt halt beside me and I saw that the person behind the motoring goggles was Daniel.

“There you are at last,” he snapped, opening the passenger door for me to get in beside him. “Where the devil have you been?”

Passersby stopped to observe with interest.

“I had some things that needed to be done,” I replied with dignity.

“I’ve been looking for you all day,” he said. “Come on. Climb in. We are holding up traffic!”

Oh, I was so tempted to say that I didn’t need a ride, thank you, and I’d prefer to take the train, but my curiosity won out over my pride. If he’d been looking for me, he might have important news he wished me to know.

I hitched up my skirts, showing an improper amount of ankle, and negotiated the high step into the automobile.

“There’s no need to shout,” I said as we drove off, swerving around a parked carriage.

“I have every reason to shout,” he said. “You were going to Atlantic City, weren’t you? Against my express wishes.”

“I hardly went to Atlantic City, conducted my business, and then returned, unless I’ve developed wings,” I replied.

“Then you must have seen sense at the last moment,” he snapped, “because you were observed getting on the ferry to the rail terminus.”

“You are having me followed these days?” I demanded angrily. “Am I a suspected criminal? Or do you plan to have a man on my tail every day after we are married, just to make sure I behave myself?”

“I had men observing the ferry in case Houdini was spotted trying to sneak out of town,” he said. “One of my men recognized you.”

I gave him a frosty stare as we came to a halt behind a jitney that had stopped to let off passengers. “Then let me just reiterate that I did not go to Atlantic City, as you must have now realized, given that I am already back in the city.”

“But you were going to go, weren’t you? And common sense won out at the last moment?”

I gave him a long stare. “I can truthfully say that common sense did not win out at the last moment.”

“Then where did you go?”