He
pictured himself as haled into night court, as cross-examined by
domineering and incredulous magistrates, who would send him to
the Island as a suspicious person. He began to be haunted by the
impression that he was being followed. The parcel became a weight
to him, a disheartening and dragging weight. He was now sure he
was being followed. He squinted back over his shoulders, only to
catch sight of a nocturnal "bill-sniper" placarding vulnerable
areas with his lithographed laudations of a vaudeville dancing
woman. A child murderer burdened with the body of his victim
could not have been more ill at ease, more timorous, more
terrified.
A sudden idea came to him as he passed a Chinese laundry in which
lights still burned and irons still thumped on an ironing board.
It was an audacious one, but it pointed toward deliverance.
His plan was to enter the laundry and pass over his parcel, as
though it were his week's washing. He would be gone before they
had discovered its contents. He merely needed to be offhand and
nonchalant. More than once he had seen dilapidated actors
carrying a limited wardrobe to the laundry at equally small hours
of the night.
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