At Park Avenue Freund and Soane paused, not apparently because of any vehicular congestion impeding their progress, but they seemed to be engaged in vehement conversation, Soane’s excitable tones reaching Barres, where he had halted again beside the tradesmen’s gate of a handsome private house.
And once more, across the street the solitary figure also halted and stood unstirring under a porte-cochère.
Barres, straining his eyes, strove to make out details of his features and dress. And presently he concluded that, though the man did turn and glance in his direction occasionally, his attention was principally fixed on Soane and Freund.
His movements, too, seemed to corroborate this idea, because as soon as they started across Park Avenue the man on the opposite side of the street was in instant motion. And Barres, now intensely curious, walked eastward once more, following all three.
At Lexington Avenue Soane sheered off and, despite the clutch of Freund, went into a saloon. Freund finally followed.
As usual, across the street the solitary figure had stopped. Barres, also immobile, kept him in view. Evidently he, too, was awaiting the reappearance of Soane and Freund.
Suddenly Barres made up his mind to have a good look at him. He walked to the corner, walked over to 257 the south side of the street, turned west, and slowly sauntered past the man, looking him deliberately in the face.
As for the stranger, far from shrinking or avoiding the scrutiny, he on his part betrayed a very lively interest in the physiognomy of Barres; and as that young man approached he found himself scanned by a brilliant and alert pair of eyes, as keen as a fox-terrier’s.
In frank but subtly hostile curiosity their glances met and crossed. Then, in an instant, a rather odd smile glimmered in the stranger’s eyes, twitched at his pleasant mouth, just shaded by a tiny moustache:
“If you please, sir,” he said in a low, amused voice, “you will not—as they say in New York—butt in.”