J. Allan Dunn

“ In this neighborhood they were shrewd of eye, and Sperry already felt that he had been sized up for what he was, a defaulter from his caste, a gentleman gone wrong; not a master crook, but an amateur, one to whom a reward might be attached. ”

“ And how could he prove the man a liar, how discredit the rest of the damning evidence? Sperry burned to find Remington, to choke the truth out of him. That would mean his own immediate arrest. But there were others back of Remington. Hilliard and Burnside had been taken in by the evidence. It was Cairns who was at the bottom of all this! Yet Cairns had, undeniably, plenty of money. His balance at the bank was large. Sperry was helpless—practically penniless. And he was an outlaw.
Sperry groaned. Some one, a man he knew, leaned over from the seat back of him and asked him if he was ill. ”

“ They had an apartment in New York also, but the Berkshire place, at Swiftbrook Bowl, was kept open usually until Christmas, though Mrs. Cairns had gone South with the first approach of fall. A street railway connected with the manufacturing town of Longfield, which was four hours from New York by the express trains.
As Sperry sped through the dusk, out of the grounds and down the road toward the car line, he saw, clear through the almost naked trees, the headlight of an approaching trolley, and raced to make connection with it, barely accomplishing his end. ”

“ To hide successfully in such a neighborhood he must be one of those who dwelt here and dodged the law and defied it, knowing the manners and the codes of the underworld. Yet he must have some place to hide away, to sleep, to wait the coming of the morning and the announcement of the newspapers. ”