From where they stood, at the head of the stairs, the boys could see him.
“You’d better stay up here,” Ken said. “I’ll go down on the platform. But try to get down in time to get on the train he takes.”
A local train came into the station shortly after Ken descended the stairs. His quarry ignored it, pacing up and down with the package held tightly beneath his arm. Suddenly the man made for the stairs he had just come down.
Ken bounded after him, glad that Sandy was on guard on the upper level. He saw the redhead first when he reached the top and then, just beyond him, the man they were both following.
Sandy rounded a corner only a few yards behind the men. Ken trailed him. But as he rounded the corner himself he saw Sandy standing still, turning his head frantically from side to side. The man was nowhere in sight.
“Where’d he go?” Ken asked quickly, coming up beside Sandy.
“I don’t know.” Sandy spoke between clenched teeth. “When I came around the corner—right behind him—he was already gone. He could be anywhere.” His gesture took in an exit to the street level, and three stairways leading down to various train platforms.
Ken thought quickly. If the man had disappeared that fast, he must have gone down the nearest stairway.
“Let’s try this,” he said, and dove for a flight of steps that led to another section of the downtown subway platform they had just left.
There was an express train waiting in the station when they reached the bottom of the stairs, but its doors were already beginning to slide shut. A familiar shape caught Ken’s eye. The man who had broken his watch crystal—the man who had picked up Barrack’s package—was squeezing himself through one rapidly narrowing entrance.