He could not be certain that the weed had thus been extracted from his pocket. It might in some manner have been lost. He did not know—he could not know. He felt sure of one thing only—his hope, his demand, that Dorothy must be innocent and good.
Despite his arguments, he was greatly depressed. The outcome of all the business loomed dim and uncertain before him, a haze charged with mystery, involving crime as black as night.
He presently came to the intersection of fashionable Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street, and was halted by the flood of traffic. Hundreds of vehicles were pouring up and down, in endless streams, while two calm policemen halted the moving processions, from time to time, to permit the crosstown cars and teams to move in their several directions.
Across from Garrison's corner loomed the great marble library, still incomplete and gloomily fenced from the sidewalk. Beyond it, furnishing its setting, rose the trees of Bryant Park, a green oasis in the tumult and unloveliness about it. Garrison knew the benches there were crowded; nevertheless, he made his way the length of the block and found a seat.
He sat there till the sun was gone and dusk closed in upon the city. The first faint lights began to twinkle, like the palest stars, in the buildings that hedged the park about. He meant to hunt out a restaurant and dine presently, but what to do afterward he could not determine.
There was nothing to be done at Branchville or Hickwood at night, and but little, for the matter of that, to be done by day. Tomorrow would be ample time to return to that theater of uncertainty. He longed for one thing only—another sight of Dorothy—enshrined within his heart.
Reminded at last of the man who had followed on his trail, he purposely strolled from the park and circled two blocks, by streets now almost deserted, and was reasonably certain he had shaken off pursuit. As a matter of fact, his "shadow" had lost him in the Subway, and now, having notified the Robinsons by telephone, was watching the house where he roomed.
Garrison ate his dinner in a mood of ceaseless meditation concerning Dorothy. He was worried to know what might have happened since his departure from her home. Half inclined in one minute to go again to the house, in the next he was quite undecided.
The thought of the telephone came like an inspiration. Unless the
Robinsons should interfere, he might readily learn of her condition.
At a drug-store, near the restaurant, he found a quiet booth, far better suited to his needs than the noisier, more public boxes at the eating place he had quitted. He closed himself inside the little cubby-hole, asked for the number, and waited.