Come to consider, her crooked course home was also logically straight. Her disguise would have aroused suspicion in a taxi and made her conspicuous in a streetcar. Since she knew her park, the cross-cut home was preferable.
As the mystery of Jane and Jane's tactics decreased, however, the correlative mysteries increased--of the selective robbery, the lied-about 'phone wires, the park as a cemetery for something literally "lost" and the direction, or mis-direction of the chief mourner's search.
A culminative interrogation point to add to his collection was her next lead. She entered the Traverse quite as his trailing sense had foretold at a spot where the wall was easily negotiable. There he waited, assuming that the rest of her route home would be direct and planning, now that he had been assured of her presence in town, that later in the evening he would telephone the most direct and forceful plea of which he was capable for an immediate interview.
Instead of following the asphalted footpath that hemmed the cobbles on one side of the cut, she picked her place and scaled the south wall. Although the section confronting him was higher, Pape lost no time in following her example and gained the top to see her dodging past one of the scattered lights. Darkness had settled. Appreciating how easily he might lose her in that unfamiliar section of municipal tumble-land, he decreased the gap between them.
A veritable butte loomed in her path, but this she took like a mountaineer. To Pape she appeared to be executing some sort of an obstacle race with herself. In his self-appointed capacity of rear-guard there was nothing for him but to follow. Being something of a climber himself, he reached the top just behind her, despite her advantage of a trail which he had not been able to find. Rounding one of the bowlder-formed crags that gave picturesqueness to the baby mountain, he pulled up short.
Jane was standing some few yards ahead, her bent back toward him, a quaint, distinct silhouette in the reflected light from Fifty-ninth Street. As she did not once glance over-shoulder, she evidently considered his pursuit thrown off. She may have paused to steady the pulses disturbed by her lively climb; perhaps was enjoying the electrical display which so fascinated him.