"I needn't worry about the ordinary policemen," he told himself. "I don't believe they know me at all. I could probably go up to any of them and ask the time, or the way to the railway station, and get away with it all right. It's only the ones who were on my track after I'd been to Hallo's office that I've got to look out for, and I'm not sure that even they would know me."
And now Hallo himself unwittingly made it safer and easier for his dogged pursuer, for instead of going toward the central part of Semlin, where policemen would be more numerous, and where the men who had gone to make the arrest at Dick's lodgings were almost sure to be posted, he circled through the poorer quarter toward the commercial district by the river.
"Oh, this is fine!" thought Dick. "I'll bet he's going to his office before he makes any report. I wonder if Stepan will think of him when I'm missing?"
Dick had to move up very close here, for the streets were crowded with people, and it would have been easy for him to lose his man in the jumble of figures. Several times now Hallo, as he neared his office, was stopped by passersby. He shook them off impatiently when they tried to detain him, however, and once Dick was near enough to hear him say, in an impatient tone: "Let me go! I have an appointment to keep at my warehouse."
And now Dick had a new inspiration. He determined to take a chance. And instead of following Hallo, he seized the opportunity when someone had stopped the Hungarian for a moment, and darted well ahead. He got a good start, and turned the corner of the block leading to the warehouse well ahead of Hallo. In a moment he was inside. Luck was with him, and he hid himself behind a big packing case in Hallo's room.
CHAPTER XII
IN THE NICK OF TIME
Crouched behind the packing case, Dick waited, wondering what was to come next. Now that he was here, he felt that he had done a foolish thing, and one only likely to lead to more trouble. There was so little chance for him to accomplish anything of value, and he was not even sure that Hallo would come here at all. Perhaps he was going somewhere else, and he had simply walked into a trap without even a chance of getting any results.
Yet luck had been with him so far in good measure. He had been almost marvelously lucky in the boathouse. That Hallo had not seen him there had been due only to fortune, and scarcely at all, in the first perilous moment, to any action of his own. And he had been lucky again in his trip into the city with Hallo ahead of him. In war time, as he knew, people were likely to be suspicious of any stranger, even of one acting in the most ordinary fashion. And his behavior, as he dodged and trailed after Hallo, had been more than suspicious.