The Mission of Poubalov — page 112: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

oe we 108 WHAT BECAME OF LITIZKL questions from anybody as to why I was loitering about. Sol slipped into the adjoining grounds, where there is a lot of shrubbery, and crawled under a tres whose . branches hung low. “From where I lay I could see whether anybody en- tered or left the house by the front door and I also saw all the windows on one side. I had been there less than a minute when somebody went up the steps and was ad- mitted. I could not see who it was, for the eyening was cloudy and it grew dark very quickly.”’ ‘‘Tt was a man named Billings,’’ said Clara; “he drove the closed carriage which took Mr. Strobel from Park Street.”’ ‘‘Indeed! I wish I had known it. Well, events hap- pened pretty quickly just then, for it seemed to me that less than another minute had passed when Poubalov ap- peared at one of the windows on the side of the house. — He raised it, stepped out, and leaped over the hedge, not five yards from where I lay. He passed so close to me that — I could have reached out from under the tree and tripped him up! I lay very still, wondering what his action could mean, for as you must know, he was bareheaded. If I had dreamed then of going to the house, I could not have done so, for he crouched down by the hedge near the street, and I could see that he had his eyes on the door and that he was waiting. I then determined to follow him wherever ) he should go, for of course he meditated villainy. I may have prevented him in that—— Oh! I don’t know!” ) | . i Litizki fairly groaned these words, and Clara was hb to utter an anxious inquiry, when he resumed: ‘“Don’t let me disturb you, Miss Hilman; I will tell the — whole wretched story. How long we lay there I don’t know, but you must, for at last you, 1 think it was you, — came out of the house and walked down to the gate to say good-night to somebody who left you there—Billings I. suppose—and walked away in a direction ier * us. You, was it you? Yes, you waited a momen AYA Fe turned to the house, whereupon Poubaloy meee ately