The day's experience filled his thoughts and quieted his restlessness.
He awaited Aleck with entire patience. Monday morning he spent in small
necessary business affairs, securing, among other things, several hundred
dollars, which he put in his money-belt. About the middle of the
afternoon he left his hotel, engaged a taxicab and started for Riverside.
The late summer day was fine, with the afternoon haze settling over river
and town. He watched the procession of carriages, the horse-back riders,
the people afoot, the children playing on the grass, with a feeling of
comradeship. Was he not also tasting freedom--a lord of the earth? His
gaze traveled out to the river, with the glimmer here and there of a
tug-boat, a little steamer, or the white sail of a pleasure craft. The
blood of some seagoing ancestor stirred in his veins, and he thrilled at
the thought of the days to come when his prow should be headed offshore.

The taxicab had its limitations, and Hambleton suddenly became impatient
of its monotonous slithering along the firm road. Telling the driver to
follow him, he descended and crossed to where Cathedral Parkway switches
off. He walked briskly, feeling the tonic of the sea air, and circled
the cathedral, where workmen were lounging away after their day's toil.
The unfinished edifice loomed up like a giant skeleton of some
prehistoric era, and through its mighty open arches and buttresses Jim
saw fleecy clouds scudding across the western sky, A stone saint, muffled
in burlap, had just been swung up into his windy niche, but had not yet
discarded his robes of the world. Hambleton was regarding the shapeless
figure with mild interest, wondering which saint of the calendar could
look so grotesque, when a sound drew his attention sharply to earth. It
was a small sound, but there was something strange about it. It was
startling as a flash in a summer sky.

Besides the workmen, there was no living thing in sight on the hillside
except his own taxicab, swinging slowly into the avenue at that moment,
and a covered motor-car getting up speed a square away. Even as the car
approached, Hambleton decided that the strange sound had proceeded from
its ambushed tonneau; and it was, surely, a human voice of distress. He
stepped forward to the curb. The car was upon him, then lumbered heavily
and swiftly past. But on the instant of its passing there appeared,
beneath the lifted curtain and quite near his own fac