Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/177

 made them venomous. Slinking, dodging, covering, he followed the girl with the cigar boxes. She entered several dance-halls, offered her wares at the door of a cheap hotel. For more than an hour Capper shadowed her through the twisting streets of the old Spanish town. Finally she turned into a narrow lane, climbed flagstone steps, set the width of the lane, to a house under the scarp of a cliff, and let herself in at the street door. Capper, following to the door as quickly as he dared, found it locked.

The little spy was choking with a lust to kill; his whole body trembled under the pulse of a murderous passion. He had found Louisa—the girl who had sold him out—and for her private ends. Capper made no doubt of that. Some day he had hoped to run her down, and with his fingers about her soft throat to tell her how dangerous it was to trick Billy Capper. But to have her flung across his path this way when anger was still at white heat in him—this was luck! He'd see this Louisa and have a little powwow with her even if he had to break his way into the house. Capper felt the doorrknob again; the door