A dim light became visible on the warship’s deck and then vanished.
Still the man stood there watching, a puzzled, anxious look coming into
his face. Quickly the light reappeared—two flashes, a pause, two
flashes, a pause, and then a single flash. It was such a light as might
have been made by a pocket torch, a feeble ray barely strong enough to
carry to the adjacent shore, a light that if it had been flashed from
some sheltered nook by the boat davits might not even have attracted
the attention of the officer on the bridge nor of the ship’s watchmen.
Manifestly it was a signal intended for the eyes of some one on shore.
A muttered imprecation escaped the lips of the watcher on the Drive. He
stood there, straining his eyes toward the ship as if expecting a
following signal, then he turned and gazed aloft at the windows of the
apartment houses lining the driveway to see if some answering signal
flashed back.
And in the shadow of the buildings, hardly ten feet away but half
sheltered by a doorway, stood his sinister pursuer, motionless but
alert.
For perhaps a quarter of an hour they held their positions. At last the
man who was being followed shrugged his shoulders impatiently and set
off again down the Drive, from time to time turning his head to watch
the spot from which the signal had been flashed. Behind him, as
doggedly as ever and now a little closer, crept the man with the hat
over his eyes.
Regardless of the lateness of the hour, at a third-floor window of one
of the great apartment houses lining the Drive sat a young girl in her
nightrobe, with her two great black braids flung forward over her
shoulders, about which she had placed for warmth’s sake a quilted
negligee. Jane Strong was far too excited to sleep. An hour before she
had come in from a wonderful party. The music still was playing mad
tunes in her ears. The excitement, the coffee, the spirited tilts at
arms with her many dancing partners had set her brain on fire. Sleep
seemed impossible as yet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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