day's quarantine, finds a
dock.

With strong sense of relief, Oswald quits the ship. He is taken by hack
to a well-appointed hotel near junction of Thirty-third Street and Fifth
Avenue.

CHAPTER XIX

THAMES PANTOMIMES

Covertly watching for new or suspicious faces, Pierre Lanier finds
himself at the river-bank. His eyes bulge with frightened surprise.

Moving upstream, oars dipping in clear moonlight, is a familiar figure.
Stoop and motion cannot be mistaken.

The father stares after that disappearing form. His indecision is short.
Following along the bank, every sense alert, he resolves to watch his
son and solve this enigma. Cautiously keeping out of view, Pierre is
slightly in the rear of the boat. They are nearing the rustic seat where
sat Oswald Langdon and Alice Webster on that fatal night years before.
The boat stops at a projecting tree-branch. Pierre is petrified with a
new fear! Dagger in hand, Paul examines this obstruction, looking thence
toward either bank. He resumes the oars, again pausing at thick
overhanging bushes. Peering under, around, and through the foliage, Paul
rubs the glistening blade on upturned shoe-sole. Sheathing his weapon,
he slowly moves toward the point whence the two bodies had disappeared
into swollen stream. Directly opposite the rustic seat, he stops.
Looking up, down, and across the river, Paul stands, steadying the boat
with both oars, his thin-bladed dagger flashing from close-set jaws.
Back and forth across the river, through moonlight shades, slowly moves
this horrible tableau. Staring at reflected shadows, Paul shrinks
backward. Dropping an oar, he grasps the pearl handle of his oft-whetted
blade. With forward poise, in striking attitude, every nerve at tense
strain, stands this crazed tragedian. Pierre is near enough to hear
mutterings. Soon the relaxing form is again seated, while boat and
dozing occupant drift downstream.

Pierre Lanier feels bewildered. These fearfully real hallucinations have
neither antidote nor specific. Of what avail is craft against such
emotional outlawry? This irresponsible infatuation of his son will rise
like Banquo wraith, a menacing interloper at all councils, doggedly
irresponsible, yet insistent.

Truly the Furies are massing their evasive yet resistless squares
against this guilty soul.

How dread is the coherence of crimes and their effects!

That father and son might have luxurious refinements, trusting business
assoc