"Sell her out, would you, you treacherous Jane!" The old vernacular returned unbidden to Willa's lips. "You'd play both ways from the ace and take in the look-out? If I had you down in Mexico I'd shoot you full of holes! You heard me! If I find you at the house when I get back, look out for your wretched skin!"
She sprang into her own taxi with a swift word to the chauffeur and bowled away, leaving her erstwhile guard wringing her hands in the road.
At the gate of the neat little frame house far up on the Parkway, her driver hesitated.
"Excuse me, Miss, but it's only fair to tell you this car can be traced here from the stand. I wouldn't double-cross you, but if the police get after me I'll have to come through."
Willa smiled and then her face grew thoughtful.
"This isn't a matter for the police. You look like a white man. What's your job worth to you a week?"
"Anywhere from fifty to seventy-five; depends on the fares I get," the chauffeur returned promptly.
"I think I can use you. What is your name?"
"I'm Willa Murdaugh." She gave no heed to the man's respectful stare. "I'll give you a hundred a week flat. You throw up your job, meet me to-morrow at the Circle at ten in the morning and we'll go and buy a good car, light and strong and fast. Can you drive a racer?"
"All right. I'll pay you for six months, whether I use you that long or not, and make you a present of the car when I'm through with you. Is it a go, Dan?"
Then ensued the spectacle of Miss Willa Murdaugh, most important débutante of the season, and Daniel Morrissey, chauffeur, binding the bargain with a solemn handshake.
While her new ally waited, she mounted the steps of the porch and rang the bell. Hurried footsteps thumped along the hall within, and a weazened, hunch backed lad smiled eagerly in the doorway.
"Greeting to thee, José." Willa spoke in soft, liquid Spanish. "I have come to tell thee that we are safe here no longer. We must seek another casa this very day."
Dinner-time came and passed, and the Halstead family sat in strained silence, their engagements forgotten in the new anxiety which enshrouded them. Mason North, hastily summoned to the conference, paced the floor restlessly.
"It was a mistake, Irene!" he said at last. "If you had told me I would never have sanctioned it. You can't treat a girl of Willa's type that way."