Two hours later, having turned aside on Broadway to greet an
acquaintance, his roving eye fell again on the spruce young man, this
time in the act of stepping into a saloon which Larcher had just passed.
"By George, this _is_ strange!" he exclaimed.
"What?" asked his acquaintance.
"That's the fifth time I've seen the same man in two days. He's just gone
into that saloon."
"You're being shadowed by the police," said the other, jokingly. "What
crime have you committed?"
The next afternoon, as Larcher stood on the stoop of the house in lower
Fifth Avenue, and glanced idly around while waiting for an answer to his
ring, he beheld the young man coming down the other side of the avenue.
"Now this is too much," said Larcher to himself, glaring across at the
stranger, but instantly feeling rebuked by the innocent good humor that
lurked about the stranger's mouth. As the young man came directly
opposite, without having apparently noticed Larcher, the latter's
attention was called away by the coming of the servant in response to
the bell. He entered the house, and, as he awaited the announcement of
his name to Miss Kenby, he asked himself whether this haunting of his
footsteps might indeed be an intended act. "Do they think I may be in
communication with Davenport? and _are_ they having me shadowed? That
would be interesting." But this strange young man looked too intelligent,
too refined, too superior in every way, for the trade of a shadowing
detective.
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