five o’clock before
My room , as I took pains to have it , overlooked the avenue , and from its windows I could easily watch the goings and comings of the gentleman whose movements were daily becoming of more and more interest to me . For set it down to caprice -- and men are often as capricious as women -- or account for it as you will , his restlessness at this period was truly remarkable . Not a day that he did not spend his time in walking the streets , and that not in his usual aimless gentlemanly fashion , but eagerly and with an intent gaze that roamed here and there , like a bird seeking its prey . It would often be as late as five o'clock before he came in , and if , as now frequently happened , he did not have company to dinner , he was even known to start out again after seven o'clock and go over the same ground as in the morning , looking with strained gaze , that vainly endeavored to appear unconcerned , into the faces of the women that he passed . I not unfrequently followed him at these times as much for my own amusement as from any hope I had of coming upon anything that should aid me in the work before me . But when he suddenly changed his route of travel from a promenade in the fashionable thoroughfares of Broadway and Fourteenth Street to a walk through Chatham Square and the dark , narrow streets of the East side , I began to scent whom the prey might be that he was seeking , and putting every other consideration aside , regularly set myself to dog his steps , as only I , with my innumerable disguises , knew how to do . For three separate days I kept at his heels wherever he went , each day growing more and more astonished if not to say hopeful , as I found myself treading the narrowest and most disreputable streets of the city ; halting at the shops of pawnbrokers ; peering into the back-rooms of liquor shops ; mixing with the crowds that infest the corner groceries at nightfall , and even slinking with hand on the trigger of the pistol I carried in my pocket , up dark alleys where every door that swung noiselessly to and fro as we passed , shut upon haunts of such villainy as only is known to us of the police , or to those good souls that for the sake of One whose example they follow , lay aside their fears and sensitiveness to carry light into the dim pits of this wretched world .