"Laura! Laura!" Now Farvel was on the steps outside. He descended to the sidewalk, turned homeward, halted, reconsidering, then hurried the opposite way. CHAPTER VIII Hat in hand, and on tiptoe, Clare slipped from her room to the hall, and down the stairs leading to the service-entrance beneath the front steps. Her coat was over an arm, and a Japanese wrist-bag hung beside it. As noiselessly as possible, she let herself out. Then bareheaded still, but not too hurriedly, and forcing a pleasant, unconcerned expression, she turned away from the brownstone house--going toward the Rectory. Across the street, waiting under steps that offered him the right concealment, a man was loitering. In the last hour he had seen a number of people enter Tottie's, and five had left--the child and Mrs. Colter, a fat man and a slim, and a quaint-looking girl with her hair in pig-tails. He had stayed on till Clare came out; then as she fled, but without a single look back, he prepared to follow. But he did not forsake his hiding-place until she had turned the first corner. Then he raced forward, peered around the corner cautiously, located her by the bobbing of her yellow head among other heads all hatted, and fell in behind her at a discreet distance. Now she put on her hat--but without stopping. She adjusted her coat, too. At the end of the block, she crossed the street and made a second turn. Once more the man ran at top speed, and was successful in locating the hat tilted so smartly. And again he settled down to the pace no faster than hers. Thus the flight and the pursuit began. At first, Clare walked at a good rate, with her head held high. But gradually she went more slowly, and with head lowered, as if she were thinking. She did not travel at random. Her course was a northern one, though she turned to right and left alternately, so that she traced a Greek pattern. Presently, rounding a corner, she turned up the steps of a house exteriorally no different from Tottie's, save for the changed number on the tympanum of colored glass above its front door, and the white card lettered in black in a front window--a card that marked the residence as the headquarters of the Gramercy Club for Girls. Clare rang. The man came very near to missing her as she waited for the answering of the bell. And it seemed as if she could not fail to see him, for she looked about her from the top of the steps. When she was admitted, he sat down on a coping to consider his next move.