Clegett nodded. “It might, and it might not,” he asserted; “but you can't jam me. You're welcome to that, anyhow. It was coming to you. I wondered when you'd be round.” It was not far from the theater to a glittering hardware store, a place that specialized in sporting goods. There were cases of fishing reels, brilliant tied flies and varnished, gayly wrapped cane rods, gaffs and coiled wire leaders, and an impressive assortment of modern pistols, rifles and shotguns. “Something small and neat,” Doret told the man in charge of the weapons. He examined a compact automatic pistol, a blunted shape no larger than his palm. It was a beautiful mechanism, and as with his silken razors, merely to hold it, to test the smooth action, gave him a sense of pleasure. Later, seated in a quiet cafe, an adjunct of the saloon below, he could not resist the temptation of taking the pistol in its rubber holster from his pocket, merely to finger the delicate trigger. There was no hurry. He knew his world thoroughly: it was a small land in which the inhabitants had constant knowledge of each other. A question in the right place would bring all the information he needed. Lemuel was absolutely composed, actually he was a little sleepy; longing and inner strife, dreams, were at an end; only an old familiar state, a thoroughly comprehensible purpose remained. A girl--she could have been no more than fourteen--was hurriedly slipping a paper of white crystalline powder into a glass of sarsaparilla. She smiled at him as she saw his indifferent interrogation. “It's better rolled with a pencil first,” he said, and then returned to the contemplation of his own affair. The result of this was that, soon after, he was seated in the smoking car of an electric train that, hurtling across a sedgy green expanse of salt meadow, deposited him in a colorful thronging city built on sand and the rim of the sea. It was best to avoid if possible even a casual inquiry, and Bowman had spoken of Atlantic City. The afternoon was hot and bright, the beach was still dotted with groups of bathers; and Lemuel Doret found an inconspicuous place in a row of swing chairs protected by an awning ... where he waited for evening. Below him a young woman lay contentedly with her head in a youth's lap; a child in a red scrap of bathing suit dug sturdily with an ineffectual tin spade. The day declined, the water darkened and the groups vanished from the beach. An attendant was stacking the swing chairs, and Lemuel Doret left his place. The boardwalk, elevated above him, was filled with a gay multitude, subdued by the early twilight and the brightening lemon-yellow radiance of the strung globes. Drifting, with only his gaze alert, in the scented mob, he stopped at an unremarkable lunch room for coffee, and afterward turned down a side avenue to where some automobiles waited at the curb. A driver moved from his seat as Lemuel approached, but after a closer inspection the former's interest died.