In the side-street restaurant Philip chose a table in a corner and sat with his back to the wall so that he could see the length and breadth of the room. The hour was late, and the tables were no more than half filled; but where there were groups of two or more, there was eager talk.
“It’s here, too,” Philip commented in low tones, indicating the eager and evidently excited groups at the other tables.
“It is everywhere, just as I told you. The town is sizzling with it. When I was a little tad I used to sit goggle-eyed listening to the tales of a cousin of ours who was one of the returned California Forty-niners. I remember he said it was that way out there. A camp would be booming along fine, with everybody happy and contented, until word of a new strike blew in. Then the whole outfit would go wild and make a frantic dash for the new diggings. It’s lucky nobody has spotted us for the discoverers. We’d be mobbed.”
“I wish I could be sure we haven’t been spotted,” said Philip, a wave of misgiving suddenly submerging him.
“I think we are safe enough, thus far,” Bromley put in, adding: “But it was a mighty lucky thing that we came in after dark last night with those sacks of samples. If it had been daytime——”
The Chinese waiter was bringing their order, and Bromley left the subjunctive hanging in air. Philip sat back while the smiling Celestial was arranging the table. As he did so, the street door opened and closed and he had a prickling shock. The latest incomer was a tall man with sunken eyes and a curly brown beard masking his face; the man who had been leaning against the bar in the Harrison Avenue hotel, and who had been named as Hank Neighbors.
“What is it—a ghost?” queried Bromley, after the Chinaman had removed himself.
“It is either a raw coincidence—or trouble,” Philip returned. “A fellow who was in the bar-room of the hotel as we passed through has just come in. He is sitting at a table out there by the door and looking the room over ... and trying to give the impression that he isn’t.”
“Do you think he has followed us?”
“It is either that or a coincidence; and I guess we needn’t look very hard for coincidences at this stage of the game.”