He passed outside,
and, at the top of the steps, paused as he took his cigarette case
from his pocket. It was nearly a week since Carling, the cashier of
the Hudson-Mercantile National Bank, had been found dead in his home,
a bottle that had contained hydrocyanic acid on the floor beside him;
nearly a week since Bookkeeper Bob, unaware that he had ever been under
temporary suspicion for the robbery of the bank, had, equally unknown
to himself, been cleared of any complicity in that affair--and yet, as
witness the conversation of a moment ago, it was still the topic of New
York, still the vital issue that filled the maw of the newspapers
with ravings, threats, and execrations against the Gray Seal, snarling
virulently the while at the police for the latter's ineptitude,
inefficiency, and impotence!
Jimmie Dale closed his cigarette case with a snap that was almost human
in its irony, dropped it back into his pocket, and lighted a match--but
the flame was arrested halfway to the tip of his cigarette, as his eyes
fixed suddenly and curiously on a woman's form hurrying down the street.
She had turned the corner before he took his eyes from her, and the
match between his fingers had gone out. Not that there was anything very
strange in a woman walking, or even half running, along the street; nor
that there was anything particularly attractive or unusual about
her, and if there had been the street was too dark for him to have
distinguished it.
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