Hawksley heard the panting of an engine and turned his head. Dimly he
saw a giant bridge and a long drab train moving across it. He picked up
the fallen man's cap and tried it on. Not a particularly good fit, but
it would serve. He then trotted round the deckhouse to the street side,
jumped to the wharf, and sucking the cracked knuckles of his right hand
fell into a steady dogtrot which carried him to the station he had left
so hopefully an hour and a half gone.
An accommodation train eventually deposited him in Poughkeepsie, where
he purchased a cap and a sturdy walking stick. The stubble on his chin
and cheeks began to irritate him intensely, but he could not rid himself
of the idea that a barber's chair would be inviting danger. He was now
tolerably certain that from one end of the continent to the other his
presence was known. His life and his property, they would be after both.
Even now there might be men in this strange town seeking him. The closer
he got to New York, the more active and wide-awake they would become.
He walked the streets, his glance constantly roving. But apparently no
one paid the least attention to him. Finally he returned to the railway
station; and at six o'clock that evening he left the platform of the
125th Street Station, and appraised covertly the men who accompanied him
to the street. He felt assured that they were all Americans. Probably
they were; but there are still some stray fools of American birth who
cannot accept the great American doctrine as the only Ararat visible
in this present flood. Perhaps one of these accompanied Hawksley to the
street. Whatever he was, one had upon order met every south-going train
since seven o'clock that morning, when Quasimodo, paying from the
gold hidden in his belt, had sent forth the telegraphic alarm. The man
hurried across the street and followed Hawksley by matching his steps.
His business was merely to learn the other's destination and then to
report.
Across the earth a tempest had been loosed; but Ariel did not ride
it, Caliban did. The scythe of terror was harvesting a type; and the
innocent were bending with the guilty.
Suddenly Hawksley felt young, revivified, free. He had arrived.
Surmounting indescribable hazards and hardships he walked the pavement
of New York. In an hour the mutable quicksands of a great city would
swallow him forever. Free! He wanted to stroll about, peer into shop
windows, watch the amazing electric signs, dally; but he still had much
to accomplish.
He searched for a telephone sign. It was necessary that he find one
immediately. He had once spent six weeks in and about this marvellous
city, and he had a vague recollection of the blue-and-white enamel
signs. Shortly he found one. It was a pay station in the rear of a news
and tobacco shop.