“Take that and keep the change, brother!” replied Red, shoving a bill with two figures on it into the taxi driver’s hand. “I’m getting out here. Stick around for a few minutes, in case I need you!”
Not waiting for the man’s thanks, he dodged across the misty street. Some two hundred feet back, the glare of the taxi’s headlights had briefly picked out a gilt sign on a darkened shop front. The words Red had glimpsed were: “CHO-SAN’S Antiques and Curios.”
Now, whipping a small flashlight from his pocket, he read the sign again, from the distance of a few feet. The shop, whose window was curtained, seemed neither large nor pretentious. On either side were warehouses closed by high, sliding doors. The blank, uninteresting walls were in need of paint and spotted with torn bill posters.
“Some dump!” Red Pennington muttered to himself. “Well, I had to take a look at what was under that sign, even if it didn’t do me a whale of a lot of good! We lost Don’s car so far back that there’s no use guessing where it—Huh! THAT’S something I didn’t see before!”
The flashlight beam, pointing downward, had picked out the marks of wet tire treads crossing the sidewalk at his feet The tracks disappeared under the big rolling doors of the warehouse to the left of Cho-San’s shop.
Sometime in the past hour, perhaps in the last few minutes, a car had gone in there!
As Red stood there pondering, he heard a motor start up behind him. At the moment, however, it did not seem important. The real problem was to find proof that the car which had made those wet tracks was the one he’d been trying to follow.
Bending down, he scrutinized the tread marks by the light of his small pocket torch. The sidewalk all about them was covered with tiny droplets of moisture, he noticed. But the marks themselves were barely starting to mist over.
Acting on a sudden idea, Red threw his light on one of his own footprints made on the fog-wet sidewalk a few seconds before. Already, he saw, two or three droplets had formed on the darker spot where his heel had pressed.
The conclusion was plain. A big car, with new, expensive tires had entered the warehouse doors less than five minutes ago!