There were no more shadows after that. The moon moved round to the right, and set behind the next house. The sky grew pale, and the lighted blind paler still, until Baumgartner drew it up before putting out his light. Pocket was now too stiff to stir; but it was not necessary; the doctor had scarcely looked out. There was a twitter of sparrows all down the road, garden answering to garden. The sun came up behind Pocket’s wall, behind the taller houses further back. And Baumgartner reappeared at his window for one instant in his cap.
The front door shut again.
Down the garden ran Pocket without the least precaution now. There was a gravel passage between the tradesmen’s entrance, on the detached side of the house, and the garden wall. This passage was closed by a gate, and the gate was locked, but Pocket threw himself over it almost in his stride and darted over into the open road.
Just then it was a perfectly empty road, but for a gaunt black figure stalking away in the distance. An overwhelming curiosity urged the boy to follow, but an equal dread of detection kept him cowering in gateways, until Baumgartner took the turning past the shops without a backward glance. Pocket promptly raced to that corner, and got another glimpse of his leader before he vanished round the next. So the spasmodic chase continued over a zigzag course; but at every turn the distance between them was a little less. Neither looked round, and once the boy’s feet were actually on the man’s shadow; for half the streets were raked with level sunlight, but the other half were ladders of dusk with rungs of light at the gaps between the houses. All were dustier, dirtier, and emptier than is ever the case by night or day, because this was neither one nor the other, though the sun was up to make the most of dust, dirt, and emptiness. It was before even the cleansing hour of the scavenger and the water-cart. A dead cat was sprawling horribly in one deserted reach of wood-paving. And a motor-car at full speed in a thoroughfare calling itself King’s Road, which Pocket was about to cross, had at all events the excuse of a visible mile of asphalt to itself.
Pocket drew back to let it pass, without looking twice at the car itself, which indeed was disguised out of knowledge in the promiscuous mire of many countries; but the red eyes behind the driver’s goggles were not so slow. Down went his feet on clutch and brake without a second’s interval; round spun the car in a skid that tore studs from the tyres, and fetched her up against the kerb with a shivered wheel. Pocket started forward with a cry; but at that moment a ponderous step fell close behind him; his arm was seized, and he was dragged in custody across the road.
“Your boy, I think!” cried one whom he had never seen before, and did not now, being locked already in the motorist’s arms.
“When did you find him?” the father asked when he was man enough, still patting Pocket’s shoulders as if he were a dog.
“Only last night when I wired.”
“And where?”
“In the house where you and I couldn’t make ourselves heard.”