It was as if a beast, once aroused, had been tamed down again; Shinsuké was once more the being of gentle and peaceful habits that he was before. The happenings of that night were recalled as in a dream that had been dreamt in the hours of his mind preyed upon by the devil. He might flee, it was suggested, and seek shelter, until the thing should have blown over, with a gambler, living at Omiya, Bushu, with whom Kinzo was under pledge of brothers. But this would be foreclosing any chance of finding Tsuya. Besides, to give a happy turn to the situation, the affair had apparently passed off without causing any speakable stir in town. Early in the morning after Shinsuké came, Kinzo went in a casual way over the ground along the plaster wall enclosing the Lord Hosokawa’s mansion. He found neither blood which had evidently been washed away by the rain of the night, nor the umbrella which Shinsuké remembered of having left on the scene. The only thing visible was remains of the souvenir box from the restaurant Kawacho, trampled and mashed under feet. As for the boatman Seiji, he seemed to have been led to the theory that Santa, with the crime on his hand, stretched it a step and ran away with the money he took by killing his wife. Therefore, in the possible event of his falling in with Shinsuké, the boatman would certainly be dismayed, but never likely to think of turning him over to the law. That was also what Kinzo had gathered by secretly working through a certain boatman he was intimate with. As a next step, Kinzo had the young man shed off the clothes of unpleasant memory, and let him take a winter suit out of his own wardrobe. The old man’s care went so far in fitting him up as to have him paint mole marks on his face.
Disguised, by day, as a vendor of straw sandals and, by night, as a wandering macaroni man, Shinsuké was left much to himself to go about in the streets, chiefly of Fukagawa.
Soon, was at its end, and the new year opened, the .12 Shinsuké made a point of prowling in the Takabashi way, every day, about the neighbourhood of the boatman’s house. A space of twenty or so days had scarce passed ere a third woman was taken into his home, and his business went on thriving, as before. That Tsuya had been sold off into bondage was patent beyond a doubt, Shinsuké considered. To leave nothing to chance, he went to the Tachibana-cho and furtively peered into the shop where he had once served. He found, or fancied to have found, the place filled with so much deserted stillness as he had never seen, and there were, of course, no signs of the young mistress being back. Instead, he stumbled upon the rumour that the master, brokenhearted over his daughter’s escapade, had been taken badly ill, kept his sick bed since the year before. Shinsuké was so unbearably grieved to hear it that he told himself he should never again turn his face that way.
The neighbourhood of the canal road was given up for the present. Each of those places in town quartering licensed or geisha houses, was taken up in order and looked into. He extended his range of search so far as Koume, Hashiba, Iriya, on the outward line of the city, and scoured even through such places as were known for the fashion and wealth of the town to keep their villas and mistresses. When the second month of the year drew to its close, he was little beyond where he had started. A little more spell of time, and the cherry trees began to come out in bloom along the riverside of Mukojima. A gauzy drape of mist was hung across the sky of springtime and peace. There came days of benign warmth which seemed to cast a spell of sleep even on him who was out and about the streets calling out his wares. The pendulum of time had swung to spring tide which had brought to his heart keen pangs of love and sorrow. And he longed so much to see Tsuya, to see her if only in the fleetest moments of dream.
“Shinsuké-san, I am wondering if the girl you are looking for isn’t the same one that calls herself Somékichi, a geisha of the Naka-cho quarters.”
Such was the glad tidings Kinzo brought home one evening in late . Kinzo had treated, he explained, himself and a couple or so of his men at the tea house Obana-ya, in Fukagawa, the same evening. One of the geisha called into the party happened to fit closely the description that had been given him by the young man. To begin with, she had eyelids of rather heavy appearance, though a girl of rare prettiness, and her eyebrows full even to the point of masculine sternness, more or less. When she smiled, her eye tooth on the right side was slightly disclosed under the upper lip and, because of its appearance out of line with the other teeth, made her smiling face all the more attractive. Her habit of giving a slight twist to her lips and pressing her teeth on the lower lip when engaged in conversation. Her voice with a ring of exquisite richness that seemed to make a straight appeal to a man’s heart. These characteristics so coincided with what Kinzo had been told about Tsuya that he went so far as to make a sly inquiry into her case. It was learnt that a gambler named Tokubey, living at Sunamura,
