My mind resisted this idea. Several things, besides, were against it. In the first place, we had voluntarily given up the hunt and I was resigned to his escape; secondly and thirdly, I dreaded being out in the bitter cold, and I badly needed the “assuaging balm” of old Huebner’s needle. If the first two were negative inhibitions, the third was decidedly positive. All three had to be conquered if I was to obey the strange prompting which whispered, and kept on whispering: “Go out and look. You’ll find him.” There was, in addition, the usual minor conflict to which I had grown quite accustomed, the conflict between my desire to be relieved of an unpleasant “duty,” yet the conviction that it was a duty I had no right to shirk. In spite of my resistance, at any rate, the prompting strengthened; as night fell I grew more and more restless and uneasy; until at last the touch of inevitability that lay behind it all declared itself--and the breaking point was reached. I could resist no longer; it was impossible to contain myself. I sprang out of my chair and told Kay I was going out to catch Boyde. “Don’t go,” he said. “Waste of time. He’s skipped long ago--been warned.” He muttered something more about the intense cold. “You’ll kill yourself.” But the impulsion I felt was irresistible. It was as though some inner power drove and guided me. As a matter of fact, I went straight to the exact spot where, among the teeming millions of the great city, Boyde was. Fifteen minutes earlier or later, I should have missed him. Also, but for a chance hesitation later--lasting sixty seconds at most--he would have seen me and escaped. The calculation, whether due to intelligence or to coincidence, was amazingly precise. I left our room at nine o’clock; at a quarter to ten I stood face to face with Boyde. The wind was driving a fine dry dust of snow before it, and all who could remained indoors. The streets were deserted; despite the nearness of Christmas, signs of bustle and the usual holiday crowd were absent. I walked very quickly to keep warm, an odd subconscious excitement in me. I seemed to know exactly where I was going, though, had anybody asked me, I could not have told them. Up 4th Avenue to 23rd Street, then west across Broadway, I passed 6th and 7th Avenues, with only one pause of a moment. At the corner of 7th Avenue I hesitated, uncertain whether to turn north, or to continue west towards 8th Avenue. A policeman was standing outside a saloon side-door, a man I had known in the Tombs police court; an Irishman, of course. I recognized him, He was friendly to me because I had used his name in a story; he remembered me now. I produced the tin-type photograph. He inspected it under the nearest electric light. “Yep,” he said, “I seen that feller only a few minutes back--half an hour maybe--only he’s lifted his mustache.” “Shaved his moustache--yes?”