Take it all round, what with the atmosphere of gloom, dodging his father's attentions, his mother's tears when he had caught her crying once or twice, and an unsatisfied stomach, black vengeance oozed from every pore of Noodles' body. His warty little fists clenched, and his unlovely face contorted into a scowl such as Noodles, and only Noodles, thanks to the background that nature had already furnished him to work upon, could scowl. Noodles set his brains to work. What he must do to Regan must be something awful and bloodcurdling; and, realizing, perhaps, that, being but twelve, he would be handicapped in coping with the master mechanic single-handed, he sought the means of assistance that most logically presented itself to him. Noodles lay awake nights trying to dovetail himself and Regan into the situations of his nickel thrillers. There wasn't any money with which to buy new nickel thrillers, but by then Noodles had accumulated quite a stock, and he knew them all off pretty well by heart, the essentials of them, anyhow. Noodles racked his brain for a week of nights--and was in despair. Not that the nickel thrillers did not offer situations harrowing enough to glut even his blood-thirsty little soul--they did--they were peaches--he could see Regan's blood all over the bank vault that the master mechanic had been trying to rob--he could see Regan walking the plank of a pirate ship, while the pirates cheered hoarsely--and he fairly revelled in every one of them--until cold despair would clutch again at his raging heart. They were peaches all right, but somehow they wouldn't fit into Big Cloud--he couldn't figure out how to get Regan to rob a bank vault, and there weren't any pirates in the immediate vicinity that he had ever heard of. Then inspiration came to Noodles one night--and he sat bolt upright in bed. He would _shadow_ Regan! A fierce, unhallowed joy took hold of Noodles. Noodles had grasped the constructive technique of the thriller! Every hero in every nickel thriller shadowed every villain to his doom. Regan's doom at the end was sure to take care of itself once he had found Regan out--but the shadowing came first. Noodles slept feverishly for the rest of the night, and the following evening he snooped down Main Street and took up his position in a doorway on the opposite side of the street from Regan's boarding house. In just what dire deed of criminal rascality he expected to trap the master mechanic he did not know, but that Regan was capable of anything, and that he would catch him in something, Noodles now had no doubt--that was what the shadowing was for--he grimly determined that he would be unmoved by appeals for mercy--and his heart beat high with optimistic excitement.