nor notice that he slid
into the office building behind him and took the same elevator up,
crowding in behind two fat men and effacing himself against the wall of
the cage. Reyburn was reading his paper, and did not look up. The figure
slid out of the elevator after him and slithered into a shadow, watching
him, slipping softly after, until sure which door he took, then waited
silently until sure that the door was shut. No one heard the slouching
footsteps come down the marble hall. Bi Gage always wore rubbers when he
went anywhere in particular. He had them on that morning. He took
careful note of the name on the door: "_Warren Reyburn_,
Attorney-at-Law," and the number. Then he slid down the stairs as
unobserved as he had come, and made his way to a name and number on a
bit of paper from his pocket which he consulted in the shelter of a
doorway.

When Warren Reyburn started on his first trip to Tinsdale his mind was
filled with varying emotions. He had never been able to quite get away
from the impression made upon him by that little white bride lying so
still amid her bridal finery, and the glowering bridegroom above her. It
epitomized for him all the unhappy marriages of the world, and he felt
like starting out somehow in hot pursuit of that bridegroom and making
him answer for the sadness of his bride. Whenever the matter had been
brought to his memory he had always been conscious of the first gladness
he had felt when he knew she had escaped. It could not seem to him
anything but a happy escape, little as he knew about any of the people
who played the principal parts in the little tragedy he had witnessed.

Hour after hour as he sat in the train and tried to sleep or tried to
think he kept wondering at himself that he was going on this "wild goose
chase," as he called it in his innermost thoughts. Yet he knew he had to
go. In fact, he had known it from the moment James Ryan had shown him
the advertisement. Not that he had ever had any idea of trying for that
horrible reward. Simply that his soul had been stirred to its most
knightly depths to try somehow to protect her in her hiding. Of course,
it had been a mere crazy thought then, with no way of fulfilment, but
when the chance had offered of really finding her and asking if there
was anything she would like done, he knew from the instant it was
suggested that he was going to do it, even if he lost every other
business chance he ever had or expected to have, ev