was getting well down into
the city. Suddenly Maku worked along to the end of his seat and got down
on the running-board. The conductor pulled the bell. The car stopped and
the Oriental jumped off.

The action had been so quick that Orme, taken off his guard, had not had
time to get off first. He, therefore, remained on the car, which began to
move forward again. Looking after Maku, he saw that the Japanese,
glancing neither to right nor to left, was making off down the side
street, going west; so he in turn stepped to the street, just as Maku
disappeared beyond the corner. He hurried quickly to the side street and
saw Maku, half a block ahead, walking with short, rapid steps. How had
Maku got so far? He must have run while Orme was retracing the way to the
corner. And yet Maku seemed to have had no suspicion that he was being
followed.

The chase led quickly to a district of poor houses and shops--an
ill-looking, ill-smelling district, where every shadow seemed ominous.
Whenever they approached a corner, Orme hurried forward, running on his
toes, to shorten the distance in the event that Maku turned, but the
course continued straight until Orme began to wonder whether they were
not getting near to the river, one branch of which, he knew, ran north
through the city.

At last Maku turned into an alley, which cut through the middle of a
block. This was something which Orme had not expected. He ran forward and
peered down the dark, unpleasant passage. There was his man, barely
visible, picking a careful way through the ash-heaps and avoiding the
pestilential garbage-cans.

Orme followed, and when Maku turned west again at the next street, swung
rapidly after him and around the corner, with the full expectation of
seeing him hurrying along, half a block away. But no one was in sight.
Had he slipped into one of the near-by buildings?

While Orme was puzzling, a voice at his elbow said, "Hello!"

He turned with a start. Flattened in a shadowed niche of the wall beside
him was Maku!

"Hello!" the Japanese said again.

"Well?" exclaimed Orme sharply, trying to make the best of the situation.

"You mus' not follow me." The Japanese spoke impassively.

"Follow you?"

"I saw you in a mirror at the other end of car."

So that was it! Orme remembered no mirror, but the Japanese might apply
the word to the reflecting surface of one of the forward windows.

"You lit a match," continued Maku. "I saw. Then I come here, t