“Dot’s fair enough, mister.” The man moved away. As he passed Johnny and Mazie he shot them a piercing glance. Even after he had gone back to the line of staring spectators, Johnny felt that his gaze held something of hatred for him. What was the meaning of that look? How had the man gotten within the lines, where only firemen were allowed? What had he wanted there? He resolved to keep an eye out for that man in the future. It was well that he did—very well indeed.
After seeing the fire under control and putting Mazie in a taxi, Johnny went directly down to the river front. After following a narrow walk at the river’s brink for some little distance, he stopped to flatten himself against the wall close to the door.
“This is the place,” he whispered to himself.
The spot he occupied was completely in shadows. The night was dark. The uncertain light from the distant bridge lamps did not reach him. A person standing ten feet away could not have seen him. He was at the entrance to the building which he supposed to be occupied by the pink-eyed man. He had hurried to the place as rapidly as possible in the hope that the man was still out and that returning to his lair he might reveal something of himself.
As Johnny stood there in the shadows he could catch the gleam of reflected light on the surface of the river. The sight charmed him. A slow, deep, dirty, sullen sort of stream, was that river. Flowing between walls of brick, stone and cement, where once it had meandered across a great sweep of marshes, it seemed a prisoner chafing at his bonds.
As Johnny pictured the marshes, whose rushes had waved over the very spot where he now stood, he thought of other marshes south of the city where in hours of idleness, or at times when he wished to think unmolested, he at times poked a flat-bottomed boat down the narrow channels that ran between the rushes.
“It’s a great place to think things through,” he told himself. “If nothing comes of this I’ll go down there to-morrow afternoon.
“Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll sleep till noon, then catch the twelve-thirty train out there.”
For an hour he waited there in the darkness. Then, growing restless, he gave up hope of the man’s return and decided to do a little investigating.
Drawing a small flashlight from his pocket he lighted his way down a narrow passage that lay between this building and the one next to it.