“Naturally,” muttered Orme.
She sighed. “It does seem as though Fate had been against us,” she said.
“Fate is fickle,” Orme returned. “You never know whether she will be your friend or your enemy. But I believe that she is now going to be our friend—for a change. To-morrow I shall get those papers.”
CHAPTER VIII
THE TRAIL OF MAKU
When for the second time that night he bade the girl adieu and saw her enter the house of her friends, Orme went briskly to the electric-car line.
He had not long to wait. A car came racing down the tracks and stopped at his corner. Swinging aboard at the rear platform, he glanced within. There were four passengers—a man and woman who, apparently, were returning from an evening party of some sort, since he was in evening dress and she wore an opera-cloak; a spectacled man, with a black portfolio in his lap; a seedy fellow asleep in one corner, his head sagging down on his breast, his hands in his trousers pockets; and—was it possible? Orme began to think that Fate had indeed changed her face toward him, for the man who sat huddled midway of the car, staring straight before him with beady, expressionless eyes, was Maku.
Under the brim of his dingy straw hat a white bandage was drawn tight around his head—so tight that from its under edge the coarse black hair bristled out in a distinct fringe. The blow of the wrench, then, must have cut through the skin.