"Can you hold out any longer?" he asked under his breath.
"I'll try!" she answered pluckily.
"I'll send a boy to buy you some buns. I expect, after a night out, the fellow's sleeping. There's no knowing what time he may choose to take a walk. The only thing is to stick it as long as you can."
The buns arrived in due course, delivered in a paper bag by a small boy. Lorraine felt a little better after eating them, but her task of waiting and watching had grown irksome in the extreme. She hated that patch of ground behind the railings. She felt that she would remember the look of the brown soil for the rest of her life. The market-hall clock chimed the quarters. The distance between the chimes seemed interminable. She had never realised that fifteen minutes could be so long. Four o'clock struck, then the time dragged on till half-past, then a quarter to five.
"I believe I'll faint or do something silly if I stay here much longer!" thought Lorraine. "I wish my legs wouldn't shake in such an idiotic manner!"
Five o'clock sounded from the tower of the market hall. She stretched her weary back, and leaned on her rake. Her eyes were fixed on the door opposite. It was opening. Someone was standing in the hall, and apparently speaking. He slammed the door and came down the path towards the gate. There was no mistaking the dark, clean-shaven face; she knew its owner again instantly. At the gate he paused and lighted a cigarette, then walked rapidly away in the direction of the railway station.
The detective turned from his flower-beds, humming a tune with apparent indifference.
"Can you identify him?" he whispered.
"Certainly I can. Without a doubt it's the man I saw this morning."
"We'll just catch him at the corner of the park, then. I've a couple of men waiting," chuckled the detective, taking a short cut over the flower-beds, regardless of tender seedlings.