the carriage he saw his captor glance at his watch and begin an
impatient sentry-beat up and down under the electric transparency
advertising the particular brand of whiskey specialized by the saloon.
He was evidently waiting for his colleague to bring in the negro, and
time pressed.

While he looked, Griswold was conscious of a curious change creeping
into heart and brain. From typifying himself as an escaping criminal the
psychological objective was slowly but surely becoming the subjective.
He _was_ a criminal. The conclusion brought no self-accusation, no
prickings of conscience. On the contrary, it swept the ground clear of
all the ethical obstructions, leaving only a vast subtlety and
furtiveness, the sly ferocity of the trapped animal.

Through half of the sentry-beat the big man's back was turned:
Griswold's eyes measured the distance, and the new subtlety weighed the
chances of a cautious opening of the carriage door, a tiger spring to
the pavement, and a battering out of the man's brains with the
handcuffs. There were few passers: it might be done.

It was not because it was too cold-blooded that he put the suggestion
aside. It was rather because the man-catcher himself suggested another
expedient. The spring evening was raw and chilly, and the open doors of
the saloon volleyed light and warmth and a beckoning invitation.
Griswold's gift, prostituted to the service of the changed point of
view, bade him read in the red face, the loose lip, and the bibulous
eyes the temptation that was gripping the plain-clothes man. "Wait,"
whispered the colorless inner voice; "wait, and be ready when he goes in
to get the drink he has promised himself he will never again be weak
enough to take while he is on duty. It won't be long."

Griswold waited. By a careful contortion of the manacled hands, which
seemed suddenly to have become endowed with the crafty deftness of the
hands of a pickpocket, he found his working capital in a pocket of the
short-sleeved coat. It had been diminished only by the hundred dollars
put into John Gavitt's hands, and the twenty he had given the negro. He
wished he might have had a glimpse of the little Irish cabman's face.
Since he had not, he made two hundred dollars of the money into a
compact roll and put the remainder back into the inner pocket.

It was only a minute or two after this that the red-faced man's
impatience blossomed into the thirst that will not be denied, and he
went into t