“Thank you,” and Sam followed the direction indicated. A strange foreboding hurried him on. He was then fully aroused to something extraordinary about to happen. He walked on the grass whenever possible to muffle the sound of his footfalls, and soon was rewarded by making out the dim form of a woman some distance ahead, being still in the range of the gate arc light. There was no mistaking the figure. From that moment he never lost sight of her.
To avoid suspicion of shadowing her, he took a diverging path and boldly clambered over the hill, and proceeded toward the children’s playgrounds, apparently away from her. Passing on and in the direction of the reservoirs, he at length stopped at the fountain.
He was the “man near the fountain” whom she discovered while she was standing under the cedar.
Sam had stopped but a moment when, to his amazement, he discovered Virginia suddenly had disappeared down the hillside. He at once followed her, and was the man she again saw on the driveway beneath her. Again she disappeared, and he shrewdly suspected, into the deep shadow of the clump of firs nearby.
He was straining his eyes diagonally up the slope, trying to penetrate the gloom, when a low scream of terror assailed his ears, and was quickly followed by a low, reassuring masculine voice. He determined to get near them. He threw himself flat against the bank and, shielded some by the unmowed grassy slope, dragged himself along for about fifty feet, to where the driveway, rounding westward, divided them from the long flight of steps. He passed within fifty feet of the couple, then cautiously pulled himself near the summit. The ridge was strategically of great value. It enabled him to flank them unseen.
He immediately availed himself of its cover and sneaked slowly and cautiously along the side of the crest to a point which he judged to be near enough to them, and then he peered above the summit. The couple were between him and the dim city lights. He strained his ears to catch their words, and drew himself closer, inch by inch, fearing discovery, yet desperately anxious to catch the purpose of the meeting, and when he saw the glittering knife, his alarm gave expression in the low whistle.
When he sprang on in pursuit of Jack, it was with a determination to ascertain who he was, where he lived, and, if possible, to gain some knowledge of his purpose in this meeting with Virginia at such an unseasonable time and place.
The few words of low-spoken conversation he had heard gave him no clue to the real object of the meeting; but he was convinced that some grave and momentous purpose was involved to have induced Virginia to keep so perilous an appointment alone.
“Did she make the appointment?” The thought was no sooner uttered than it gave place to another equally as suggestive, for just then thoughts raced through Sam’s brain with amazing rapidity. “Or, rather, was she not compelled to meet the stranger by some power which he had obtained over her—some secret of her life which she feared—a deathly fear, of disclosure, and which this man knew, and its power he knew only too well, how to wield.”
The more he thought about it, the more the mystery, for such it appeared to him, deepened. He determined to fathom it. Inured to a rough, open-air life on the Texas plains, his constitution was hard and tough, and well seasoned for the job presented—and, it must be confessed, it was to his liking.