He was going. Everybody was going. She kept her eyes fixed upon him, unmindful of the fact that somebody else was crowding her apart from Molly and Miss Greatorex, or that, as the throng pressed outward, they were getting further and further away.
The “shiny man” wasn’t three feet ahead of her when they at last gained the gang-plank and surged forward to the wharf. She could almost touch his shoulder—she would in a minute—she was gaining—
No she wasn’t! He had slipped aside and was hurrying away with the agility of youth! It couldn’t be the cripple and yet—there was the point of his crutch sticking out behind! Well, she reckoned she could run as fast as he did and she promptly set out to try!
It was a strange race in a strange place. West street in New York is a very crowded, dirty thoroughfare. An endless, unbroken line of drays, beer-wagons, vehicles of every sort, moves up one side and down the other of the hurrying street cars which claim the centre roadway. The pavement is always slippery with slime, the air always full of hoarse shouts, cries and distracting whistles. Car bells jangle, policemen yell their warnings to unwary foot passengers, hackmen screech their demands for patronage, and hurrying crowds move to and fro between the ferries and the city. A place that speedily set Dorothy’s nerves a-tingle with fear, yet never once diverted her from her purpose.
As she had once followed poor Peter Piper in a mad race over the fields, “just for fun,” so now she followed her “shiny man,” to regain her lost property. She had become convinced that he had it. He looked, at last, exactly like a person who would rob little girls of their last five dollars! Their own whole monthly allowance and a most liberal one.
“But he shall not keep it! He—shall—not!” cried Dorothy aloud, and redoubling her speed, if that were possible.
He darted between wagons where the horses’ noses of the hinder one touched the tail-boards of the forward; so did she. He bobbed under drays; so did she. He seemed bent upon nothing but escape; she upon nothing but pursuit and capture. She believed that he must have seen her though she had not caught him turning once around to look her way.
They had cleared the street; they were upon the further sidewalk; a policeman was screaming a “halt” to her but she paid no attention. In that medley of sounds one harsh cry more or less was of small account. What was of account, the only thing that now remained clear in her eager brain was the fact that the fugitive had—turned a corner! A corner leading into a street at right angles with this broad one, a street somewhat narrower, a fraction quieter, and even dirtier. She followed; she also flashed around that dingy, saloon-infested corner, bounded forward, breathless and exultant, because surely she could come up to him here. Then she paused for just one breath, dashed her hand across her straining eyes, and peered ahead.
The “shiny man” had disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up; and there Dorothy stood alone in the most unsavory of alleys, with a sudden, dreadful realization of the fact that—she was lost.