I left him with that.

As I left the house a man pressed close to me, and I turned to see what he wanted. There was no one else about.

"Is it done?" he whispered.

I looked at him keenly; but I had never seen him before, I thought.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"The night in the riverside wharf," he whispered back.

He was a Nihilist; here right in the very eye of the police web.

"The way is laid," I answered, equivocally, as I hurried away.

I had actually forgotten in my eagerness all about my charge to kill the man with whom I had been closeted in conference.

But I saw instantly that the Nihilist would probably hold it for an act of treachery that I had been in Tueski's house and yet had let him live.