XLI
There remain some few things of which the public is ignorant. This was equally true of the police, or some move would have been made by them before this.
The clew afforded by the disappearance simultaneously with that of the will of a key considered of enough importance by its owner to have been kept upon his person had evidently led to nothing. This surprised me, for I had laid great store by it; and it was after some hours of irritating thought on this subject that I had the dream with which I have opened this account of a fresh phase in my troubled life.
Perhaps, the dream was but a natural sequence of the thought which had preceded it. I was willing to believe so. But what help was there in that? What help was there for me in anything but work; and to my work I went.
But with evening came a fresh trial. I was walking up Broadway when I ran almost into the arms of Edgar. He recoiled and I recoiled, then, with a quick nod, he hurried past, leaving behind him an impression which brought up strange images. A blind prisoner groping in the dark. A marooned sailor searching the boundless waste for a ship which will never show itself above the horizon. A desert wanderer who sees the oasis which promises the one drop of water which will save him fade into ghastly mirage. Anything, everything which bespeaks the loss of hope and the approach of doom.
I was struck to the heart. I tried to follow him, when, plainly before me—as plainly as he had himself appeared a moment previous, I saw her standing in a light place looking down at something in her hand, and I stopped short.
When I was ready to move on again, he was gone, leaving me very unhappy. The gay youth, the darling of society, the beloved of the finest, of the biggest-natured, and, above all, of the tenderest heart I knew—come to this in a few short weeks! As God lives, during the days while the impression lay strongest upon me, I could have cursed the hour I left my own country to be the cause, however innocently, of such an overthrow.
That he had shown signs of dissipation added poignancy to my distress. Self-indulgence of any kind had never been one of his failings. The serpent coiled about his heart must be biting deep into its core to drive one so fastidious into excess.
Three days later I saw him again. Strange as this may seem in a city of over a million, it happened, and that is all there is to it. I was passing down Forty-second Street on my way to the restaurant I patronized when he turned the corner ahead of me and moved languidly on in the same direction. I had still a block to walk, so I kept my pace, wondering if he could possibly be bound for the same eating-place, which, by the way, was the one where we had first met. If so, would it be well for me to follow; and I was yet debating this point when I saw another man turn that same corner and move along in his wake some fifty feet behind him and some thirty in front of me.
This was a natural occurrence enough, and would not even have attracted my attention if there had not been something familiar in this man’s appearance—something which brought vividly to mind my former encounter with Edgar on Broadway. What was the connection? Then suddenly I remembered. As I shook myself free from the apathy following this startling vision of Orpha which, like the clutch of a detaining hand, had hindered my mad rush after Edgar, I found myself staring at the face of a man brushing by me with a lack of ceremony which showed that he was in a hurry if I was not. He was the same as the one now before me walking more and more slowly but still holding his own about midway between us two. No coincidence in this. He was here because Edgar was here, or—I had to acknowledge it to myself—because I was here, always here at this time in the late afternoon.
I did not stop to decide on which of us two his mind was most set—on both perhaps—but pursued my course, entering the restaurant soon after the plain clothes man who appeared to be shadowing us.
Edgar was already seated when I stepped in, but in such a remote and inconspicuous corner that the man who had preceded me had to look covertly in all directions before he espied him. When he did, he took a seat near the door and in a moment was lost to sight behind the newspaper which he had taken from his pocket. There being but one empty seat, I took it. It, too, was near the door.
It seemed a farce to order a meal under these circumstances. But necessity knows no law; it would not do to appear singular. And when my dinner was served, I ate it, happy that I was so placed that I could neither see Edgar nor he me.
The man behind the newspaper, after a considerable wait, turned his attention to the chafing-dish which had been set down before him. Fifteen minutes went by; and then I saw from a sudden movement made by this man that Edgar had risen and was coming my way. Though there was some little disturbance at the time, owing to the breaking up of a party of women all seeking egress through the same narrow passage, it seemed to me that I could hear his footsteps amid all the rest, and waited and watched till I saw our man rise and carelessly add himself to the merry throng.
As he went by me, I was sure that he gave me one quick look which did not hinder me from rising, money in hand, for the waiter who fortunately stood within call.
My back was to the passage through which Edgar must approach, but I was sure that I knew the very instant he went by, and was still more certain that I should not leave the place without another encounter with him, eye to eye.
But this was the time when my foresight failed me. He did not linger as usual to buy a cigar, and so was out of the door a minute or two before me. When I felt the pavement under my feet and paused to look for him in the direction from which he had come, it was to see him going the other way, nonchalantly followed by the man I had set down in my mind as an agent of police.
That he really was such became a surety when they both vanished together around the next corner. Edgar was being shadowed. Was I? I judged not; for on looking back I found the street to be quite clear.