“All right,” nodded Smull.
He could now just distinguish a shape there. For some time he watched it, speculating on the affair and still puzzled. For how the girl who had so contemptuously repulsed him could ever have married the derelict across the street, Smull was unable to conjecture.
More perplexing to him still were her relations with Annan. He did not wish to believe they were meretricious. In the muddy depths of him he didn’t believe that. But he would not have hesitated to accuse her.
Anyway, it didn’t matter. Annan didn’t matter, nor did the bum across the way; nor did the girl’s intrigues, chaste or otherwise, matter to this man.
He was after his quarry. Perhaps in the muddy depths of him he knew the chase was hopeless. Perhaps he was doomed to hunt anyway—never to rest, never to quit the trail over which he had sped so eagerly, so long ago, after his first quarry.
He had smoked four large cigars and was lighting a fifth. It was ten o’clock. No taxi had turned into Jane Street.
The windows of the house he watched remained unlighted. And, across the street, the shadowy shape had not stirred. Undoubtedly the fellow had recognised Smull’s car. Which concerned Smull not a whit.
However, he was growing restless. He had over-smoked, too.
Now he flung away the cigar just lighted, opened the limousine door and got out.