shaved his moustache because the Rockaway Hunt demanded it.
He had said hardly a word during the entire scene. Half an hour after it was over he was sleeping soundly again. I, too, thanks to the drug, slept deeply. I woke in the morning to find the mattress on the floor unoccupied. Boyde had gone. With him had gone, too, my one thick suit and, in addition, every possible article of pawnable or other value that had been in the room or in the packing-case downstairs. Only the razor and the confession had he left behind because they were beneath my pillow.
The next time we met was in even more painful and dramatic circumstances. I decided it was time to act.
I went down that same morning to police headquarters in Mulberry Street, and swore out a warrant for his arrest on two charges; forgery and petit larceny. A theft of more than $25 was grand larceny, a conviction, of course, carrying heavier punishment. I reduced his theft of my $32, therefore, by seven dollars, so that, if caught and convicted, his sentence might be as short as possible.
But for the fact that I was a reporter on a Tammany newspaper, nothing would have happened. As it was, no bribe being available, the police refused to take any steps in the matter. The confession, they knew, was worthless; it was a small case; no praise in the press, no advertisement, lay in it. "Find out where he is," Detective Lawler said, "and let us know. Just telephone and I'll come up and take him. But you do the huntin'. See? I don't."
This was Detective Lawler, who, under another name came into a story years later—"Max Hensig," in "The Listener."
The determination to put Boyde where he could no longer harm himself or others held as firm in me as, formerly, the determination to forgive had held. The hunt, however, comes a little later in the story. There was first the explanation of the doctor's secret. The doctor was my companion in the dreadful hunt.
