My sleep was dreamless this time, for I was thoroughly tired. Whether Kennedy slept I do not know, but I suspect that he did not, for when he was conducting a case he seemed unable to rest as long as there was something over which he could work or think.
It seemed almost no time before Kennedy roused me. He was already dressed—in fact, I don’t think he had taken time for more than a change of linen.
A hasty bite of breakfast and we were again on the first accommodation train that went into the city in the cool gray dawn, leaving Burke with instructions to keep us informed of anything important that he discovered.
No one for whom we cared saw us leave and we had the satisfaction of knowing that we should be in the city and at work long before any one probably knew it. That was a quality of Kennedy’s vigilance and sleeplessness.
“It’s just as important to guard against prying ears at this end of the line as the other,” remarked Kennedy, after hurriedly mapping out a course for ourselves, which included, first of all, calling out of bed an officer of the telephone company with whom he was intimately acquainted and whom he could therefore afford to take into his confidence.
Without a moment’s more delay we hurried down-town from the railroad station.
Shelby Maddox had given Craig the names of two Curb brokers with whom he was dealing in confidence, for, although Maddox Munitions was being traded in largely, it was still a Curb market stock and not listed on the big exchange.
“They are in the same building on Broad Street,” remarked Kennedy as we left the Subway at the Wall Street station and took the shortest cuts through the basements of several tall buildings in the financial district. “And I don’t trust either one of them any farther than I can see him.”
It was very early, and comparatively few people were about. Craig, however, managed to find the janitor of the building where the brokers’ offices were—a rather old structure overlooking that point where Broad Street widens out and has been seized on by that excited, heterogeneous collection of speculators who gather daily in a corner roped off from traffic, known as the Curb market. From the janitor he learned that there was one small office in the front of the building for rent at a seemingly prohibitive rate. It was no time to haggle over money, and Kennedy laid down a liberal deposit for the use of the room.
His tentative arrangements with the janitor had scarcely been completed when two men from the telephone company arrived. Into our new and unfurnished office Craig led them, while the janitor, for another fee, agreed to get us a flat-topped desk and some chairs.