"Move ahead very slowly."
With eyes fixed upon the dusty asphalt, the secret agent walked ahead of the car. The lights of the latter threw everything they fell upon into sharp relief. At the curb before Okiu's house, Ashton-Kirk held up his hand, and the car halted.
"What is it?" asked Fuller.
"I caught the tire tracks of another car below there; they were so clear and uncut by other marks that I fancied that they might have been made late at night."
"Do you now think they were?"
"I can't say. But they lead up to this point. A halt was made, then the machine turned and doubled on its tracks."
Some distance up the street on the opposite side, a flare of red and green light caught the speaker's attention. It came from a drug store, and with Fuller he crossed the street and entered. A white-jacketed clerk stood behind a marble covered counter, and served them with the cigars which they asked for. Ashton-Kirk lighted his at a swinging gas flame near the door and drew at it with enjoyment.
"Rather out of the way for an all-night place, isn't it?" he asked
The clerk shrugged his shoulders.