CHAPTER XXIII.
WEAVING THE NET.
Was the hour of Shadow's vengeance at hand?
It would seem so, from the expression which came into his face as hepassed nearer to the man whom he believed he had at last recognized.
An intense but suppressed excitement marked his every movement.
"Thank Heaven!"
He had thus exclaimed a moment before while he was earnestlyscrutinizing the face of this person.
The fact that he could be surprised into breaking his long andwell-maintained silence spoke very strongly for his belief that he hadat last found the man he was in search of.
And that man was McGinnis.
When he left the place Shadow followed him.
Like a sleuth-hound he kept on the track of the evil man, and socarefully did he time his movements, that the suspicions of McGinniswere not aroused.
Light-footed as a cat, noiseless as a very shadow, gliding along like aghost, a better person than the mysterious little detective could nothave been found for the purposes of dogging and pursuit.
Gradually the expression of excitement left his face, and it becamevery stern and set.
It pictured a grim and unalterable purpose.
And that purpose was--vengeance!
That is, if McGinnis should prove to be the right man.
Shadow had been mistaken before, and there was a possibility of hisbeing so again.
But he was satisfied that this time he had found the right man.
Earnestly he had studied the face of Helen Dilt's abductor, and itexactly corresponded with the mental picture he had formed of theindividual he was after.
Such a likeness, he told himself, could hardly be the result ofaccident.
A description which had been given him, every word of which he hadcarefully treasured up, suited McGinnis perfectly and in everyparticular.
And, as Shadow pursued, a grim smile began to play about his lips.
"It is the man!" he muttered, again breaking through the shield ofsilence with which he had so long kept himself surrounded.
"It is the man!" he muttered again. "My darling, you shall be avengedsoon."
Shadow knew that he had broken the self-imposed silence.
Yet he did not appear vexed, as he had when I forced him to speak on acertain occasion.
Why was this?
It seemed to me as if he had vowed solemnly to utter no word to livingbeing until he had found the man he was after.
Satisfied that McGinnis was the person, he considered the vow fulfilled.
This was, indeed, the true reason.
But was McGinnis the man?
As closely as "death hangs to a nigger," Shadow hung to McGinnis, norever let him get out of his sight.
More than once the hand of the mysterious detective sought the buttof his revolver, as it had done in the saloon, in the first fever ofexcitement subsequent to the recognition.
An equal number of times, however, the fingers unclasped from theweapon.
While McGinnis filled the bill as far as the description went, andwhile Shadow would have staked his life that he was the man, he hadsense enough, and was cool enough, to be aware that after all he mightbe mistaken.
He did not wish to kill the wrong man.
That would be worse than no revenge at all.
No, he must be sure beyond even the smallest doubt, before he fired thefatal shot.
He must follow the same general plan he had followed for so long--keepnear the suspected man, waiting until he should convict himself by hisown word of mouth.
McGinnis had not the remotest idea that he was under surveillance, andcertainly did not dream that he was tracked to his very door.
In the dark hours before the dawn a dark figure glided around andaround the shanty, ghost-like in the perfect silence of its movements.It was Shadow surveying the lay of the land.
He was seeking a mode of access to the house of McGinnis.
None was to be found.
It was secure from any but forcible entrance, and eavesdropping fromoutside would be worse than useless.
Shadow saw this.
It did not stump him, however.
He knew the old saying, that there is more than one way of killinga cat, and failing in one plan, he always was able to invent anotherwithout much loss of time.
Just before daybreak Shadow withdrew from the vicinity of McGinnis'house.
While in sight of it he paused, and had any one been near, it wouldhave been to see Shadow raise his hand and shake that slenderforefinger in that peculiar way of his.
Then he was gone.
Little dreaming of the mine that was preparing beneath his feet,McGinnis, with plenty of money in his pockets, which meant unlimitedrum while it lasted, considered himself in clover.
He did not issue from his house until just after sunset.
On his way up the street his attention was drawn to a rathershowy-looking woman--a blonde--coming from the opposite direction.
She was young, not much over twenty, was tolerably well dressed, andwore a derby hat with a decidedly rakish air.
All told, there was a certain jauntiness about her bearing telling soplain a story that most men would have turned aside to let her pass.
Not so McGinnis.
He winked at her.
Without an instant's loss of time she winked back.
"Halloo, Bridget!" said he.
"Halloo, Pat!" was her rather free-and-easy reply, in a jocular tone.
McGinnis paused short.
"Which way?" he asked.
"Any way," was the reply.
"Walk along with me, then."
"Good enough."
McGinnis and the girl walked along side by side, the man eying her insilence for a while. Then he asked:
"Who are you?"
"Me? I'm called Daisy, mostly."
"Belong here?"
"No; just got to New York this morning from London. I say, you oldrooster, are you 'crooked?'"
"Yes," assented McGinnis.
"So am I. My pal was nabbed in London, but I managed to escape thebobbies."
"What's your lay?" inquired McGinnis.
"'Whipes' and 'tickers' and such like."
Without following their conversation further, we shall advance thetime a few hours, and once again carry the reader to one of those lowsaloons that are patronized by the "crooked" and "flash."
At either side of a small table sat McGinnis and Daisy.
He was treating her and trying to induce her to join her fortunes withhis.
Daisy hung back.
McGinnis continued to argue earnestly--and to order drinks.
A shrewd observer might have noticed that, while McGinnis swallowed allhis liquor, the girl each time managed to dump hers out beneath thetable.
The liquor began to mount to McGinnis' head, seasoned though it was.
He was becoming intoxicated.
He had been quite taken by the dashing manner of the girl and was nowrapidly becoming maudlin and correspondingly affectionate.
He wanted to hug Daisy.
He put his arm around her, but she shook it off with a:
"Here, let's have another drink."
At last, when more than half intoxicated, he became very confidential,and to impress Daisy with the desirability of her taking him as herpal, began recounting his exploits in the past.
Her eyes began to snap and sparkle, and she listened to him withill-concealed eagerness, while I, disguised, stood at a littledistance, looking on.
My eyes had rested on Daisy's face for an instant, as they took inevery inmate of the place. Back to her face my eyes had wandered,attracted by a something that was familiar.
The heavy falling of a drunken man caused her to glance around. Hereyes were directed at me for a second or two--and instantly I wasstaggered.
Those eyes were Shadow's!
Daisy was Shadow.
If Shadow was Mat Morris, then Ma
t Morris was Daisy.
But could that be?
Could Mat Morris so artfully disguise himself? Could that slenderthroat, and drooping shoulders, and swelling bust, belong to a man?