More than once, on the street, Smull had accosted her, even followed on behind her. Lately, too, it became apparent to the girl that her husband also had been watching and spying on her, because he wrote a violent, crazy letter insisting that she warn Smull to keep his car out of her neighbourhood: “--I’ve been keeping tabs on you,” he wrote. “Now, I’ll keep an eye on that”--unprintable epithets followed, nauseating Eris; and she burned the letter without reading the remainder. One evening in early August Albert Smull, standing beside his car on Greenwich Avenue and waiting for Eris to leave her house, noticed a shabby individual apparently watching him from the opposite corner. On a similar occasion, a day or two later, he noticed the same shabby man on the same corner, staring steadily across the street at him. After a few recurrent glances, a vague idea came into Smull’s brain that the shabby man’s features were familiar to him. Ordinary cowardice was not Smull’s kind. He walked leisurely across the street and came up to the shabby man and coolly scrutinised him. “Well, by God,” he said calmly, “I _thought_ I’d seen you before. I heard you were out of prison. What’s your graft now, Eddie?” “_Yours_,” replied Carter. Smull, puzzled, awaited further explanation. Carter, twitching all over, stood digging at the bleeding roots of his finger nails. “Well,” inquired Smull with his close-eyed, sanguine smile, “what do you suppose is _my_ graft, Eddie?” “My wife.” “Hey?” “My wife, Eris Carter.” Smull’s features turned a heavy crimson. After a silence: “So _that’s_ the situation,” he said heavily. Carter ceased twitching. He said very distinctly: “When you and Shill sent me up the River, that’s what you did to me, too.... On the day I was married to her, that’s what you did to me. You made a crook out of me because you didn’t pay me living wages when I worked for you. Then you made a jail-bird out of me. Now, you’ve made me a bum. “And that isn’t enough for you. You want to make a prostitute out of my wife.” “Shut your filthy mouth,” said Smull coolly. “I’ll stop your filthy mouth if you don’t keep away from my wife,” said Carter in a still, uncanny voice. Smull laughed. “Beat it,” he said. And, as Carter did not stir: “Get a move on, you dirty bum. Come on!... Or shall I have to hunt up a cop to give you the bum’s rush?” Carter’s visage turned ghastly: “All right; I’ll go.... But you’ll go farther yet if you don’t let my wife alone.” He took one step toward Smull, hesitated, then, twitching all over, he turned and shuffled away down Greenwich Avenue, digging his thumbnails into his mangled fingers. CHAPTER XXXI Eris went home early in August.