“Then if you are not hired you are your own master, and you serve yourself ill when you take the trouble to follow me. Now I’m going to finish my walk, and I beg you to keep out of my way. This is not a place where liberties may be infringed with impunity. Good evening, sir.”
Armitage wheeled about sharply, and as his face came into the full light of the street lamps the stranger stared at him intently.
Armitage was fumbling in his pocket for a coin, but this impertinence caused him to change his mind. Two policemen were walking slowly toward them, and Armitage, annoyed by the whole incident, walked quickly away.
He was not wholly at ease over the meeting. The fact that Chauvenet had so promptly put a spy as well as the Servian assassin on his trail quickened his pulse with anger for an instant and then sobered him.
He continued his walk, and paused presently before an array of books in a shop window. Then some one stopped at his side and he looked up to find the same man he had accosted at the Treasury Building lifting his hat,—an American soldier’s campaign hat. The fellow was an extreme blond, with a smooth-shaven, weather-beaten face, blue eyes and light hair.
“Pardon me! You are mistaken; I am not a spy. But it is wonderful; it is quite wonderful—”
The man’s face was alight with discovery, with an alert pleasure that awaited recognition.
“My dear fellow, you really become annoying,” and Armitage again thrust his hand into his trousers pocket. “I should hate awfully to appeal to the police; but you must not crowd me too far.”
The man seemed moved by deep feeling, and his eyes were bright with excitement. His hands clasped tightly the railing that protected the glass window of the book shop. As Armitage turned away impatiently the man ejaculated huskily, as though some over-mastering influence wrung the words from him:
“Don’t you know me? I am Oscar—don’t you remember me, and the great forest, where I taught you to shoot and fish? You are—”