The little fat boy in the door stared, his mouth open in astonishment and exhibiting the vacant spaces where his teeth ought to be. He had never known a small working boy such as Edward to buy a daily paper. He thought Ned was guying him until he took another look at the outstretched hand with the proffered nickel. Then he gravely handed over the folded journal. The elderly gentleman of clerical aspect looked down at Ned with a smile; he saw in the occurrence only an amusing affectation of mannish tastes and habits. It had a far graver meaning to another person in the car, who was openly staring at Ned, with a new light kindling in his eyes and an expression of triumph in the curl of his lip.
Ned was cowering back, making a feint of opening the paper, and yet all a-quiver with the realization that he had betrayed himself. How could a poor boy, such as he was, be supposed to take an interest in Gorham's insurance? He feared his eagerness upon the mention of the subject might intimate to the man—if this were really a detective who had watched and followed him—that he possessed some knowledge of the fire, connected with the question of insurance. It might even imply the truth,—arson! Only he would be numbered with the incendiaries. He had given the detective the clue,—Insurance!
Ned presently made an effort to seem to read the paper,—he could not pin his mind to a single syllable. It was scant comfort to him now—since he had given himself away—to know that the First Player and he must have overheard only a part of Gorham's conversation with his friend, and that in refusing to renew his policy in the Rising Phœnix Insurance Company because of a quarrel with the agent he had at once placed the risk elsewhere. Thus the burned theatre was amply insured in other companies, and Gorham's loss would be slight, comparatively speaking, by reason of the disaster.
The lamp had been lighted in the car, although it was not yet quite dark. Ned could see still as they whizzed along on some considerable elevation the wide spread of the city stretching in dusky undulations against the sky, which had now grown gray, portending rain. Beyond some dip, full of roofs, massive blocks of business houses rose, frowning and gloomy, while between surged smoke and dust in fantastic, haggard clouds that suggested witches and demons and undreamed-of powers of the air. The mazes of the telegraph and telephone wires now and then became visible, meshed and webbed about the town as if it were caught and held fast in the toils of some big scientific spider. Oh, it was a dreary evening,—long did Ned remember it! Even the most commonplace things had strange and sinister effects. The air was pulsing with rhythmic vibrations; the earth throbbed tumultuously; from a square railed inclosure in the middle of the street a column of black smoke gushed suddenly forth as if spewed from the pits of hell, and a locomotive was shrieking like a demon as it rushed out from the long tunnel beneath the avenue where the cable car rolled heavily on and on, its gong clamoring at every intersecting street, and now and again in a tumult of jarring warning lest some enterprising vehicle usurp the track.
Once more Ned looked at the detective. The detective was looking at Ned. For that moment they understood each other.
But the sharp boy of a town is no match for the sharp man of a town. The quiet personage in plain black clothes folded up his newspaper, put it in his breast pocket, then turning slightly in his seat, looked out of the window at the rows of decorous, even handsome residences which they were now passing. The gilded numbers were distinct upon the illuminated transoms, for within the gas was already lighted. He seemed to scan each with interest, as if he sought some particular number. Presently he rose, passed to the platform, quietly swung himself off, and walked slowly and meditatively to the sidewalk.
Ned sat amazed as the progress of the car soon left him behind. He began to think that he had been mistaken from the first,—that he had neither been watched nor followed. The man had looked attentively at him to be sure,—but what of that? The white-haired gentleman of clerical aspect had also looked at him with interest. Ned felt quite certain now that influenced by his own secret anxiety he had magnified the danger, and fancied suspicion in every casual careless stranger. He was sure that he had encountered no detective.
Ned could not see through the buildings on either hand. He could not know that the few passers along a side street were staring in mild surprise at a grave, genteel-looking man, dressed in black, who was running at full speed as if for his life. When this man reached a broad avenue parallel to the one which he had quitted he did not slacken his pace, but plunged down another side street, then through an alley, and out once more upon a thoroughfare. There he hailed a passing car and sprang upon it. He had calculated time and distance very narrowly, for as the car made a broad curve, turning down a street at right angles with the avenue it had just traversed, it came upon the track close behind a car with a blue light, the one which he had left not five minutes earlier, which was still rolling down the street in a straight line.
As he looked through the window at the vehicle in advance his sharp eyes were quick to detect the slim little figure of the printer's devil still sitting close to the door, and he felt that whether it were instinct which had warned the boy or inadvertence on his own part in bringing his surveillance too close, it had been cleverly counteracted.