Again, where had that long, lean, pursuing streak sprung from? Could it
have lurked somewhere in the neighborhood, spying on the hotel that Miss
Falconer had just left, waiting for her to emerge? I was aware of my
absurdity, but I couldn't put an end to it; with each instant that went
by my uneasiness seemed to grow. So I yielded, not without qualms as
to whether the quarter would take me for a gibbering idiot. Grimly and
doggedly I stalked the length of the rue St.-Dominique, and the stately
houses on both sides seemed to scorn me, their shutters to eye me
pityingly, as I peered to right and left for the possible cache of the
car.
And within four hundred feet I found it. Against all reason and
probability, there it was. At my left there opened unostentatiously one
of those short, dark, neglected blind alleys so common in the older part
of Paris, with the houses meeting over it and forming an arched roof.
Running back twenty feet or so, it ended in a blank wall of stone; and,
amid the dust and debris that covered its rough paving, I distinctly
made out the tracks of tires, with between them, freshly spilt, a tiny,
gleaming pool of oil.
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