“I t’ink you should better go in der back room,” said the stout man, and Potter obeyed reluctantly.
“How about getting away yourself?” he said. “Doesn’t that interest you?”
“You should worry. In one hour you can go. Den I look out for meinself.”
Potter sat down in a rickety chair, a very disgusted young man. He was a blunderer. From the first he had blundered. And now his blundering promised to bring all his discoveries to nothing. Cantor would escape, others, duly warned, would escape—all, doubtless, to carry on their work elsewhere in the country. So much for rushing into things headlong.... He wondered what Downs was doing. There was but one ray of light in the affair—Cantor’s work was interrupted, his organization broken up. But that was little when compared to what might have been accomplished if he had worked with his intelligence instead of his impulses. It is no pleasant experience for a young man of Potter’s make-up to find himself ridiculous, and he felt he was ridiculous—held a futile prisoner by a stout old German who seemed to regard the whole thing in a humorous light. He scowled and applied a well-selected list of names to himself.
He never knew before how long sixty minutes could be. From time to time his guard peered owlishly at a fat silver watch and announced the passage of time.
“Vell, we wait fifteen minutes already,” he would say, or, “Perty soon we keep company halluf an hour.”
At last the hour came to an end; the stout man replaced his watch in his pocket. “You should go now if you like,” he said. “I got no more use for you here, eh? You run along now, und maybe you keep out of troubles.” Evidently the man did not take him over-seriously, and it enraged Potter. The stout man chuckled. “Und don’t worry apout me, please. Goot-by.”
Potter was accompanied to the door, and the stout man stood by, his right hand concealing something in his pocket, until Potter started his car and drove away. Then he vanished with suddenness.
Potter was at a loss. How should he proceed now? Should he go in search of Downs to report his fiasco, or should he go ahead on some plan of his own? The lesson he had just received was forgotten. He had no stomach to see the look that would come over Downs’s face when he made his report. No, he would do something. He would not come back empty-handed. He would not go back until he had something to show for his afternoon’s work. He had set out to catch Philip, and he would stick to it until he did keep Philip. Such are the ways of head longitude, if one may name it so.
The one place Potter could think of where trace might be had of the man was where he lived—over Herman von Essen’s garage—and he took that as his destination. Ten minutes brought his car to the von Essen driveway and he turned in. His headlights cut through the dusk to the doors of the garage, for the short winter afternoon was speeding toward darkness. As he leaped out of the car he noted that the house was dark and paused a moment to peer from one window to another. No light was visible, and he wondered at it. His objective, however, was the garage, and he hastened toward it. The doors were locked. Through the window he had used the night before he looked in and could make out the presence of both the von Essen cars.