“There’s Watch Crystal!” Ken said. “Coming around the corner there! You were right!”
Instinctively they backed farther into the theater lobby as the man they watched hurried toward the entrance of the Tobacco Mart. He paused a moment in front of it and looked quickly around. His eyes, beneath a lowered hatbrim, surveyed the front of the theater opposite, and the upper stories of the buildings on either side of it.
Ken could feel his heart thudding heavily. He had no idea whether they had been noticed or not.
And then, as if satisfied, the man hurried through the black-painted door of the wholesale tobacco shop.
Ken took a deep breath. “Well,” he said, “you sure outsmarted him! And I was ready to give up when he disappeared back there at Grand Central Station. Do you think he spotted us—that that’s why he was going through all those evasion tactics?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he has reasons of his own for thinking that he’s always in danger of being tailed. We can’t even guess about what’s going on here. We don’t know enough. The question is,” Sandy added, “how to go about learning any more. I suppose we could go into the Tobacco Mart and inquire the price of cigars by the thousand lot.”
Ken shook his head. “No use tipping our hand—on the chance that Watch Crystal hasn’t seen us yet.” He glanced toward the cashier’s window and saw that the ticket seller was already eying them with marked disapproval. “But we can’t hang around here any longer. Let’s see if we can’t find a better vantage point, where we can keep an eye on the Tobacco Mart for a while. Then if Watch Crystal comes out and goes somewhere else—”
“Right,” Sandy agreed. “If we follow him long enough we’re bound to get some clue as to what he’s up to.”
They found what they were seeking almost immediately—an observation post that seemed custom-made for the job of watching the grimy store across the square. It was a small branch library—one of the many subdivisions of New York’s huge public library system. It occupied a narrow building not more than twenty-five feet wide, but it appeared to use all three floors of the structure. In any case, as the boys could see through a large window running almost the full width of the building, the second floor was clearly a reading and reference room. Several elderly men were seated there at broad tables, reading by the gray light of the winter afternoon.
“That’s for us,” Sandy agreed, when Ken suggested that they go in. “I’ll keep an eye on the Tobacco Mart until you get set up there, and then I’ll join you.”