Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/233



was exactly one hour later that Kestner stopped his taxi-cab on a side-street sloping down to the East River water-front. He was apparelled in a suit of rusty brown, purchased from a Seventh Avenue second-hand man, a pair of square-toed tan shoes that had both seen better days and been made for larger feet, and a weather-stained felt hat with an oily sweatband and a sagging brim.

He slackened his pace a little as he turned the corner, leisurely rolling a Durham cigarette and as leisurely returning the cotton pouch to his coat-pocket. He stared indolently and irresolutely about him, as he stood opposite the shooting-gallery window. Then he shuffled by, hesitated, and finally swung back in his tracks. But during every moment of that apparent aimlessness he was carefully inspecting his ground.

As he shuffled into the gallery itself he found it comparatively deserted, steeped in the lull of its mid-afternoon quietness. Yet he stood puffing his cigarette, lethargically watching two youths in sailor blouses as they shot at a glass ball dancing at the summit of a fountain spray. They were shooting desultorily, and with comments of ribald disgust. So Kestner sank into one of the four red-armed chairs ranged in front of the street-window. From that