It was not that--it was the fact that she had neither
passed by the house on whose steps he stood, nor come out of any of the
adjoining houses. It was as though she had suddenly and miraculously
appeared out of thin air, and taken form on a sidewalk a little way down
from Marlianne's.
"That's queer!" commented Jimmie Dale to himself. "However--" He took
out another match, lighted his cigarette, jerked the match stub away
from him, and, with a lift of his shoulders, went down the steps.
He crossed the pavement, walked around the front of his machine, since
the steering wheel was on the side next to the curb, and, with his hand
out to open the car door--stopped. Some one had been tampering with
it--it was not quite closed. There was no mistake. Jimmie Dale made
no mistakes of that kind, a man whose life hung a dozen times a day on
little things could not afford to make them. He had closed it firmly,
even with a bang, when he had got out.
Instantly suspicious, he wrenched the door wide open, switched on
the light under the hood, and, with a sharp exclamation, bent quickly
forward. A glove, a woman's glove, a white glove lay on the floor of the
car. Jimmie Dale's pulse leaped suddenly into fierce, pounding beats. It
was HERS! He KNEW that intuitively--knew it as he knew that he breathed.
And that woman he had so leisurely watched as she had disappeared from
sight was, must have been--she!
He sprang from the car with a jump, his first impulse to dash after
her--and checked himself, laughing a little bitterly.
Pages:
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238