“Well, I’m a damned fool,” he muttered, and went out into the street.

He was disappointed and a trifle sheepish.  Life was full of queer chances, that was all.  No resemblance on earth, no coincidence of birthplace, could make him believe that Judson Clark, waster, profligate and fugitive from the law was now sitting up at night with sick children, or delivering babies.

After a time he remembered the prescription in his hand, and was about to destroy it.  He stopped and examined it, and then carefully placed it in his pocket-book.  After all, there were things that looked queer.  The fellow had certainly evaded that last question of his.

He made his way, head bent, toward the station.

He had ten minutes to wait, and he wandered to the newsstand.  He made a casual inspection of its display, bought a newspaper and was turning away, when he stopped and gazed after a man who had just passed him from an out-bound train.

The reporter looked after him with amused interest.  Gregory, too!  The Livingstone chap had certainly started something.  But it was odd, too.  How had Gregory traced him?  Wasn’t there something more in Gregory’s presence there than met the eye?  Gregory’s visit might be, like his own, the desire to satisfy himself that the man was or was not Clark.  Or it might be the result of a conviction that it was Clark, and a warning against himself.  But if he had traced him, didn’t that indicate that Clark himself had got into communication with him?  In other words, that the chap was Clark, after all?  Gregory, having made an inquiry of a hackman, had started along the street, and, after a moment’s thought, Bassett fell into line behind him.  He was extremely interested and increasingly cheerful.  He remained well behind, and with his newspaper rolled in his hand assumed the easy yet brisk walk of the commuters around him, bound for home and their early suburban dinners.

Half way along Station Street Gregory stopped before the Livingstone house, read the sign, and rang the doorbell.  The reporter slowed down, to give him time for admission, and then slowly passed.  In front of Harrison Miller’s house, however, he stopped and waited.  He lighted a cigarette and made a careful survey of the old place.  Strange, if this were to prove the haven where Judson Clark had taken refuge, this old brick two-story dwelling, with its ramshackle stable in the rear, its small vegetable garden, its casual beds of simple garden flowers set in a half acre or so of ground.

A doctor.  A pill shooter.  Jud Clark!

IX

Elizabeth had gone about all day with a smile on her lips and a sort of exaltation in her eyes.  She had, girl fashion, gone over and over the totally uneventful evening they had spent together, remembering small speeches and gestures; what he had said and she had answered.