An instant later Ken leaped up. “O.K. We’ve left him. Come on.” He ran toward the forward end of the car with Sandy close at his heels. The trainman was just closing the door when they reached him.
“Wrong train!” Ken gasped, pushing past him. He leaped to the platform and ducked immediately behind a baggage truck piled high with mailbags. Sandy joined him there.
They let the last car of the train rumble past before they risked a look.
The man in the pea jacket had already turned his back on them and was walking toward the stairway.
“We’ll take the other stairs back there,” Ken said. “Keep behind the pillars.”
They reached the upper level before Cal did, in time to watch him cross the waiting room and take the escalator to the Seventh Avenue exit.
“He doesn’t know much about Penn Station,” Ken murmured. “Come on. We’ll get a cab before he does.”
He ducked down a short flight of steps to an intermediate level and ran for the taxicab stand. Less than a minute later they were once more leaning back against leather cushions and Sandy was saying, for the second time that day, “Chatham Square—as fast as you can get there.”
Twenty minutes afterward they were crouched down in a narrow passageway between two buildings, a few doors down the street from the Tobacco Mart. They waited nearly five minutes before a cab drew up before the shop’s darkened windows, and Cal darted out of it across the sidewalk.
His heavy knock on the door sounded above the roar of the departing taxi’s motor. They could even hear his voice saying, “It’s me—Cal.”