“Thank you,” and Sam fingered the powder gingerly. “Good night, Doctor.”
“Good night, sir.”
As Mr. Harris and the doctor left the room Sam stood for a moment in deep thought, then muttered to himself: “That fellow out there near midnight. No lights or gong on his machine. Deliberately ran me down—and Virginia about! Did he know she was to be there?” He shook his head—“It looks queer.” And then he lifted his eyes in a quick, resolute way.
“I’ll be back in the park at dawn—I guess so!”
With that he flipped the opiate out of the window.
CHAPTER IX.
It was in the gray of the dawn when Sam alighted from the first outbound car at the junction of Twenty-third and Washington streets and immediately struck out for the City park.
He was desirous of being the first visitor there, and he was inordinately curious to examine by the light of day the ground he had traversed a few hours previous, and particularly the spot where Virginia had met the mysterious stranger, as also the tangle of vines in which he was satisfied had lurked most deadly danger.
He had been urged on by an indefinable something, a sort of presentiment that quickened to impatience, his desire for an early trip to the park, and pursuing his way steadily along, afraid of no ambush now, for he was armed, he at length arrived at the spot which he recognized by the clump of firs close to the row of the esplanade benches. He examined the ground as carefully as the uncertain light would permit. Discovering nothing unusual, he was about to abandon the search and make his way over to the tangle of vines, when on second thought he decided to wait awhile for stronger light. Producing a cigar, he contentedly sat on a bench—the very same Virginia had occupied—near a tree.
Sam was not of a romantic turn of mind, yet his attention was arrested by the sublime grandeur of the scene confronting him. The morning was emerging from the deep darkness of night, mild, clean and fresh. The base of the distant eastern hills was yet shrouded in inky blackness—a blackness intensified by a vast superimposed floating mass of thin fog, seemingly motionless in the noticeably still air.