CHAPTER X.
“JUSTICE CALLS!”
“Followed!”
Merriwell muttered the word. He knew there was a spy on his track. It was not a pleasant thing to think that it was possible he had been spotted by the Black Brothers. It was not a pleasant thing to think that it might be he had been marked as a victim.
Perhaps he would be the next to receive the blood-red star, the fearful symbol of death!
“I’ll make sure he is shadowing me,” thought Frank.
Then he quickened his steps, turning from street to street, boarded an omnibus, left it after a little for a cab, and left the cab at the Rond Point de l’Etoile, where he paused to gaze at the wonderful and awe-inspiring Arch of Triumph, the grandest triumphal arch ever constructed, which was erected in commemoration of Napoleon’s victories. For some minutes Frank quite forgot everything else in viewing the grand structure, situated at the union of twelve broad and beautiful avenues, “each of which sweeps away as grandly as the radiance of a search-light on the sky at night.”
It was not strange that, for the time, he forgot the black shadow that had been following him. He turned into the magnificent Avenue des Champs Élysées. Thoughtfully, he walked along, unmindful of the glittering show about him. He had fell to meditating once more on the mystery of the death of Edmond Laforce. Scarcely noting where he was going, he turned into a side street.
All at once, he turned square about, and stopped. Frank’s eyes were keen. At a distance, on the opposite side of the street, a man was buying a paper at one of the little kiosks at which newspapers are sold in Paris.
“It is the shadower!” muttered the American youth, with a strange, jumping feeling at his heart. “I have not been able to shake him! There is no doubt about it now—I am spotted!”