ewess, paused, and bending her head, without
a word of salutation, listened to the eager lad. The hands of the
two met, in the darkness, and then Einstein sped back into the
glaring Bowery, while the dark-robed woman pursued her way toward
the East River.

"No bad walker," was McNerney's forced conclusion, as he gathered
himself. The unknown had swept around the corner from the south
and turned eastwardly to meet the waiting lad, with the sure gait
of one who knew she was waited for.

On, onward, with undulating lissom swing, the veiled woman sped,
McNerney judiciously regulating his gait. And all her settled purpose
was evident in the measured flight, the head never once turned in
curious gaze, and the singularity of her march.

At last, halting before a respectable-looking tenement-house on
First Avenue, the woman turned into the open hallway and paused at
the door of the lefthand apartment.

In an instant there was a flash of light within, and then the dimly
outlined shadows of a woman moving from behind the linen curtains.

"Fairly run to earth! It's a good night's work!" laughed McNerney.
"Things are going my way at last!" He hastened off and, jumping on
the nearest car, sought his own home by a round-about way. "Now,
Dennis, my boy," he said, as he stuffed his pipe. "One bit of
hurry, and ye are ruined! I have two birds to watch. And I know
her perch, their meetingplace, and the boy's own den!" He now saw
airy castles of Spain gaily rising in the smoke wreaths around him.

"To-morrow," he said, "I will prospect, and I think I'll borrow
Mrs. Haggerty's boy, Dan, to hunt for a tailor in that building.
He is sharp and he can knock at the door by mistake, so I'll get
her general description.

"If the janitor is a fair man to jolly, Dan must then find out his
pet saloon, and I'll make a new friend on the East Side.

"But I must disappear, after I have met this boy Einstein at the
station. I'll have to slip on a false mustache for ten minutes.
Jim Condon can bring him out to me in the dark. He can tell him I
don't care to run up against the sergeant."

On Central Park West there was a circle of astonished listeners,
when Doctor William Atwater had closed the conference by reporting
his inability to trace a single enemy of the murdered man. Counsellor
Stillwell, in a grave reverie, listened and abandoned all present
hope of any clue to the cowardly murder.

"All seems darkness around us, now," he sighed.