im, and an idea came. He
opened the front door wide, and then stole back through the conservatory
into the moonlight. He heard Baumgartner coming down before he gained the
garden. He tore to the end of it, and cowered in the shadow of the far
wall.

The doctor came running into the moonlit room, but not for a minute; it
looked as though he had run out first into the road. In the room he lit
the gas, and Pocket saw him have a look in all the corners, but hardly the
look of a seeker who expects to find. Some long moments he stood out
horribly at the open window, gazing straight at the spot where the
fugitive crouched a few inches out of the moonlight and hugged the
revolver in his pocket. He seemed to see nothing to bring him out that
way, for he closed that window and put out the gas. The trembling watcher
heard the front door shut soon after, and saw another light in
Baumgartner's room the minute after that, and the blind drawn down. But
on the blind there lagged a cloud-capped shadow till the doctor's pipe was
well in blast.

There were no more shadows after that. The moon moved round to the right,
and set behind the next house. The sky grew pale, and the lighted blind
paler still, until Baumgartner drew it up before putting out his light.
Pocket was now too stiff to stir; but it was not necessary; the doctor had
scarcely looked out. There was a twitter of sparrows all down the road,
garden answering to garden. The sun came up behind Pocket's wall, behind
the taller houses further back. And Baumgartner reappeared at his window
for one instant in his cap.

The front door shut again.

Down the garden ran Pocket without the least precaution now. There was a
gravel passage between the tradesmen's entrance, on the detached side of
the house, and the garden wall. This passage was closed by a gate, and
the gate was locked, but Pocket threw himself over it almost in his stride
and darted over into the open road.

Just then it was a perfectly empty road, but for a gaunt black figure
stalking away in the distance. An overwhelming curiosity urged the boy to
follow, but an equal dread of detection kept him cowering in gateways,
until Baumgartner took the turning past the shops without a backward
glance. Pocket promptly raced to that corner, and got another glimpse of
his leader before he vanished round the next. So the spasmodic chase
continued over a zigzag course; but at every turn the distance between
th