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272 He glanced around. There was no policeman in sight. He saw only half a dozen pedestrians—shambling creatures who appeared to seek the plentiful darkness. The neighboring warehouses, the pier opposite, frowned back at him. The lapping of the water was expectant. Yet high in the air two brilliant arches were suspended across a slight mist. They were restless with blurred movement. Constantly they lowered into this somber pit an incessant murmuring, like an echo, heard at a distance, from some complicated and turbulent industry.

These crowded bridges, his desolate surroundings, assumed a phantasmal quality for Garth. The only real world lay beyond those sloping, silent doors which had been swung back to admit Nora.

While he looked a figure detached itself from the shadows at the corner of the warehouse. It moved, lurching, in his direction. He could only see that the newcomer was in rags with unkempt hair, and features, sunken and haggard. He grasped his revolver, suspecting that this vagabond exterior disguised a member of the gang—an outpost. Yet there was a chance that the man was one of the neighborhood's multitude of derelicts—a purveyor, possibly, of valuable information.

"Come here, my friend," he called. "How long have you been loafing in that corner?"

The other hesitated. When he answered his voice was without resonance—scarcely more than an exaggerated whisper.