There was no reply. I ventured to put out my hand to where he had been standing, and grasped a handful of air. I spoke again, and groped about, then held up the lantern. He wasn't in any of the rooms. He had gone as noiselessly as he had come. Chingahgook could not have vanished more silently. I was left to my own resources.
I wasn't going to stay any longer in this mouldy, rat-riddled, mouse-eaten house. I couldn't breathe or think, so I went into the open air, turned down the right-of-way, and into the street where the suspected house stood. As I passed it I flashed the lantern on the door, and saw a chalk mark like a streak of forked lightning. I perceived at a glance that this was a preconcerted sign for "Thunder-and-Lightning" to give the house a wide berth and vanish.
I thought I heard a laugh behind the window as I passed, but I suppose it was all imagination. The laugh was against me, of course. I was in no laughing mood. I went on, and hadn't reached the corner of the street, when I determined to have another look at the place. I had got half-way to it, when a moving mass of women's clothes passed me, and a voice came out of the bundle.
"Wallace, does your mother know you're out?"
This stung me to madness. I made a grab at the millinery, but it was gone. I heard a silvery laugh somewhere. It might have come from the middle of the road, an upstairs window, the top of a chimney, or other unlikely place, for anything I knew in the state of frenzy I was in. I made a dash down the road, but might as well have looked for a needle in a haystack. I found a big D—— between my teeth, but I swallowed the other three letters with a gulp, and cursed inwardly.
My mother didn't know I was out; but I did, and was sick of the business. I had been too confident. There was nothing more to be done that night, for the game had got wind of me somehow.
I slipped my baton up my sleeve, and turned to go home. The streets were deserted and dark, save for a faint patch of light under an oil-lamp, which flickered and glistened on the wet ground. In a short time I had left the houses behind, and walked across the open space between Collingwood and the gaol, striking into a narrow path which many feet had trodden hard; it wound here and there between pools of water. There was just width enough for two persons to walk abreast, and there was only sufficient light for me to see the grey strip of solid ground stretching in front. I had arrived a little to the west of the gaol walls, when the moon began to show herself in the rifts of the driving clouds.
A figure loomed up ahead of me, about a hundred feet away. It came nearer and nearer, when I saw it was a man. I prepared to go to the right so as to let him pass, when he suddenly presented a pistol at my head, and said, in a blood-red whisper, "Your money or your life!" I brought up my right hand, with the forefinger thrust out like the barrel of a pistol, while my other fingers were doubled up, and shouted, "I'll shoot you, you scoundrel!" At the same time I knocked the fellow's pistol-hand up with a rapid blow. A deafening report followed, and a ball grazed the top of my head. The moon shone out full on the man's face. He had blazing black eyes, a broken nose, and the scar of an old cut down his left cheek. As soon as he fired, he darted off with the speed of a deer at right angles to the path, and I heard him floundering in the water. I was in pursuit in a moment, although I thought my head was ploughed with the ball, and had got a top-dressing of bone dust, which would bring up a crop of troubles.
The moon withdrew herself. The landscape was a blank once more. I was to draw no prizes to-night apparently. The would-be murderer was swallowed up in the darkness. I went hither and thither searching for him, but soon found I had lost my bearings; so I retraced my steps as well as I could, till I struck La Trobe Street, then went to my lodgings, let myself in, and crept up to my room.
When I lit the candle a thought flashed into my brain with electric speed. I stood dazed; then brought my right hand down on the dressing-table with such terrific force as to ruin the whole box-and-dice in a moment; the legs snapped; there was a crash, and the looking-glass was smashed into a hundred pieces.