“Look!” he said.

On the other side of the street, in the light of the gas-lamp that stands in the centre of the block, was the Count himself.  For the moment that he was beneath the gas-lamp they saw him clearly.  His face was set in an expression of gloomy sternness; his rapid, resolute walk indicated a definite purpose; he carried a little bundle in his hand.

“What a villain he looks!” whispered Brown.  “Upon my soul, I do believe that he is going to murder somebody!”

“Ah, the vile animal!  We will pursue,” answered Jaune, also in a whisper.

Giving the Count a start of a dozen house fronts, they stepped out from their retreat and followed him cautiously.  He walked quickly up Macdougal Street until he came out on Washington Square.  For a moment he paused—­by Sam Wah’s laundry—­and then turned sharply to the left along Fourth Street.  At a good pace he crossed Sixth Avenue, swung around the curve that Fourth Street makes before beginning its preposterous journey northward, went on past the three little balconied houses whose fronts are on Washington Place, and so came out upon the open space where Washington Place and Barrow Street and Fourth Street all run into each other.  It was hereabout that Wouter Van Twiller had his tobacco farm a trifle less than two centuries ago.

The Count stopped, as though to get his bearings, and while they waited for him to go on Brown nudged Jaune to look at the delightfully picturesque frame house, set in a deep niche between two high brick houses, with the wooden stair elbowing up its outside to its third story.  It came out wonderfully well in the moonlight, but Jaune was too much excited even to glance at it.

At the next group of corners—­where Fourth Street crosses Grove and Christopher Streets at the point where they go sidling into each other along the slanting lines of the little park—­the Count halted again.  Evidently, the exceeding crookedness of Greenwich Village puzzled him—­ as well it might.  Presently a Christopher Street car came along and set him straight; and thus guided, he started resolutely westward, as though heading for the river.

“Is it posseeble that he goes ’imself to drown?” suggested d’Antimoine.

“No such good luck,” Brown answered shortly.

Coming out on what used to be called “the Strand”—­West Street they call it now—­the Count bore away from the lights of the Hoboken Ferry and from the guarded docks of the White Star and Anchor lines of steamers, skirted the fleet of oyster boats, and so came to the quiet pier at the foot of Perry Street, where the hay barges unload.  This pier runs a long way out into the river, for it is a part of what was called Sapo-kamikke Point in Indian times.  The Count stopped and looked cautiously around him, but his pursuers promptly crouched behind a dray and became invisible.