Kicko, who had shown in his whines a spirit torn by regret to forsake either his bones or his friends, now caught up with Pape, briefly sniffed his hand, then trotted after the bent, dingy, scuttling figure merging into the gloom beyond.
The dog’s appeal she heeded, but with a well-aimed stone.
“Go back,” she ordered him. “Don’t you dare follow me. If you do—if anybody follows me—I’ll find a policeman and get you both arrested for annoying me.”
Kicko, tail between legs, skulked back in the general direction of his treasure pile.
Pape, too, heeded to some extent her warning, evidently meant more for him than the dog. But, although he slackened his pace, he did not turn or skulk. There were reasons a-plenty why he felt justified in pursuit.
CHAPTER XI—DUE EAST
The greatest of parks has its bright sides, many-faceted as the Kohinoor, croquet grounds for the old, benches for the parlorless tenement young, shaded arbors for the love possessed, pagodas for picknickers, May poles for the youngsters, roller-skating on the Mall, rowing on the lakes. Just as a jewel catches the light from only one direction at a time, however, this emerald of the city has also its shadows.
Already Why-Not Pape had realized this of his adopted range; knew that, despite the scattering of such policemen as could be spared from pavement-beats outside and the greater number of electric lights upon whose surveillance the City Fathers appeared to place their chief dependence, serious crimes occasionally occurred in Gotham’s great, green heart. Even during his short stay he had noted in the daily news tales and tales of outlawry that would have called out posses in Montana—of women held up afoot or in taxis, of men relieved of their valuables at gun-point, of children kidnapped for ransom, of a region of caves occupied by bandits, of footloose pickpockets and mashers.
An inclusive thought of the possibilities of the region in the dead dark of a moonless night was what had started him after the bent, black figure scuttling into the fast-dropping gloom ahead. She had repulsed him even more ungratefully than she had the dog—as scornfully as though there were no Metropolitan Grand Opera House at Thirty-ninth Street and Broadway, as though her Parian pallor had not turned the hue of the ardor with which, a few nights ago, his lips had pressed her hand. But, whether her denial of him was from whim or necessity, he could not permit her to cross the park unguarded at that hour.
And surely there was enough else that was strange about this, their third encounter, to have overcome the prideful hesitation of the most ill-treated man. Hours back, in mid-afternoon, he had seen her in the witch-like disguise of an old herb-hunter, trying to locate some particular spot without arousing the suspicions either of passers-by or of the authorities. Her quest had kept her long past the most fashionable dinner hour. Doubtless she had waited until dusk before beginning the actual digging with her trowel in order to decrease the chances of interfering in what must be a violation of the most sacred park regulations.