n aware of.

Few people passed him. Once he caught a glimmer of a policeman's buttons
along the park wall, and an unpleasant shiver passed over him. At the
same moment an electric hansom flew noiselessly past him. He shrank
back into the shadow of a porte-cochere. The hansom halted before the
limestone basement house. A tall figure left it, stood a moment in
the middle of the sidewalk, then walked quickly to the front door. It
opened, and the man vanished.

The hansom still waited at the door. Mortimer, his hands shaking, looked
at his watch by the light of the electric bulbs flanking the gateway
under which he stood.

There was not much time in which to make up his mind, yet his fright
was increasing to a pitch which began to enrage him with that coward's
courage which it is impossible to reckon with.

He had missed Quarrier once to-day when he had been keyed to the
encounter. Was he going to miss him again through sheer terror? Besides,
was not Quarrier a coward? Besides, was it not his own money? Had he not
been vilely swindled by a pretended friend? Urging, lashing himself into
a heavy, shuffling motion, he emerged from the porte-cochere and lurched
off down the street. No time to think now, no time for second thought,
for hesitation, for weakness. He had waited too long already. He had
waited ten minutes, instead of five. Was Quarrier going to escape again?
Was he going to get out of the house before--

Fumbling with his latch-key, but with sense enough left to make no
noise, he let himself in, passed silently through the reception-hall
and up to the drawing-room floor, where for a second he stood listening.
Then something of the perverted sportsman sent the blood quivering into
his veins. He had him! He had run him down! The game was at bay.

An inrush of exhilaration steadied him. He laid his hand on the banister
and mounted, gloves and hat-brim crushed in the other hand. When he
entered the room he pretended to see only Lydia.

"Hello, little girl!" he said, laughing, "are you surprised to--"

At that moment he caught sight of Quarrier, and the start he gave
was genuine enough. Never had he seen in a man's visage such white
concentration of anger.

"Quarrier!" he stammered, for his acting was becoming real enough to
supplant art.

Quarrier had risen; his narrowing eyes moved from Mortimer to Lydia,
then reverted to the man in the combination.

"Rather unexpected, isn't it?" said Mortimer, staring at