Page:Vance--The rass bowl.djvu/133

 "Say at two o'clock this afternoon, at Eugene's. You know the place?"

"I have lunched there"

"Then you shall again to-day. You won't disappoint me?"

"I will be there. I … I shall be glad to come. Now—please!"

"You've promised. Don't forget."

He stepped back and stood in a sort of dreamy daze, while, with one final wonderful smile at parting, the girl assumed control of the machine and swung it out from the curb. Maitland watched it forge slowly up the Avenue and vanish round the Thirty-sixth Street corner; then turned his face southward, sighing with weariness and discontent.

At Thirty-fourth Street a policeman, lounging beneath the corrugated iron awning of a corner saloon, faced about with a low whistle, to stare after him. Maitland experienced a chill sense of criminal guilt; he was painfully conscious of those two shrewd eyes, boring gimlet-like into his back, overlooking no detail of the wreck of his evening clothes. Invol-