was 'spotting' you."

Griswold looked up quickly. Miss Grierson was still facing the window,
and he was glad that she had not seen his nervous start.

"'Spotting' me?" he laughed. "Where did he get that idea?"

"How should I know? But he had made himself believe it; he even went so
far as to describe the man. Oh, I can assure you Johnnie has an
imagination; I've tested it in other ways."

"I should think so!" said the man who also had an imagination, and
shortly afterward he took his leave.

An hour later the same afternoon, Broffin, from his post of observation
on the Winnebago porch, saw the writing-man cross the street and enter a
hardware shop. Having nothing better to do, he, too, crossed the street
and, in passing, looked into the open door of Simmons & Kleifurt's. What
he saw brought him back at the end of a reflective stroll around the
public square. When he entered the shop the clerk was putting a
formidable array of weapons back into their show-case niches. Broffin
lounged up and began to handle the pistols.

"If I knew enough about guns to be able to tell 'em apart, I might buy
one," he said half-humorously. And then: "You must've been having a
mighty particular customer--to get so many of 'em out."

"It was Mr. Griswold, Mr. Ed. Raymer's new partner," said the clerk.
"And he _was_ pretty particular; wouldn't have anything but these
new-fashioned automatics. Said he wanted something that would be quick
and sure, and I guess he's got it--I sold him two of 'em."

Broffin played with the stock long enough to convince the clerk that he
was only a counter lounger with no intention of buying. "Took two of
'em, did he?--for fear one might make him sick, I reckon," he said, with
the half-humorous grin still lurking under the drooping mustaches.
"Automatic thirty-twos, eh? Well, _I_ ain't goin' to try to hold your
Mr.--Griscom, did you call him?--up none after this. He might git me."

Whereupon, having found out what he wanted to know, he lounged out again
and went back to the hotel to smoke another of the reflective cigars in
the porch chair which had come to be his by right of frequent and
long-continued occupancy.

XXVII

IN THE SHADOWS

Not counting the vague and rather pointless disturbment which had
culminated in the purchase of a pair of pistols, Griswold had left the
Mereside library considerably shaken, not in his convictions, to be
sure, but in his confidence in his own powers of imagin