"Have n't any address I suppose--don't know his favorite joint?" "I don't know a thing about him except that he has been down there before--that he lit out again a little over an hour ago, half mad--and that I must find him." "An hour ago, eh? That helps, some. There 's only a few of 'em open to the public at that time. But say, is there any special hurry? He's had time to get his dope by now. I 've got some work there in the morning." "There's a girl waiting for him, Beefy, a girl who is paying big for every hour he's gone." "So? Well, m' boy, guess we 'll have to get him then. I 'll be down in ten minutes. Make yourself at home on the doorstep." Donaldson waited in the taxicab. For the first time in his life he computed the value of one-sixth of an hour. So long as he had been with the girl--or so long as he had been active in her behalf--the minutes were filled with sufficient interest to make them pass unreckoned. But to sit here and wait, to sit here and watch the seconds wasted, to sit here and be conscious of each one of them as it bit, like a thieving wharf rat, into his dwindling Present and carried the morsel of time back to the greedy Past, was a different matter. When finally Saul appeared with a fat cigar in one corner of his chubby mouth, Donaldson was halfway across the sidewalk to meet him. "Good Lord!" he laughed excitedly, almost pushing the big man toward the cab, "I thought you were lost up there." Saul paused with one foot already on the step. Then turning back, he struck a match for his cigar. The flare revealed Donaldson's eager eyes, his tense mouth. He carelessly snapped the burnt match to the lapel of Donaldson's coat and stooping to pick it off took occasion to whiff the latter's breath. "The sooner we start--" suggested Donaldson, impatiently. Saul stepped in, his two hundred pounds making the springs squeak, and sinking into a corner waited to see what he might learn from Donaldson's talk. The suspicion had crossed his mind that possibly the latter had got into some such way himself--it was over a year since he had seen him--and was taking this method to hunt up an all-night opium joint. His experience made him constantly suspicious, but unlike the regular police, a suspicion with him remained a suspicion until proven. It never gained strength merely by being in his thought. At the end of five minutes he had discarded this theory. Stopping the machine, he gave the cabby a real address in the place of the fictitious one he had first given in Donaldson's hearing. The latter's mind, supernormally alert, detected the ruse instantly. He placed a hand upon Saul's knee.