Warren forgot. After blocks and blocks of trailing, he bolted down the street, examining each house with anxious excitement.
Finally he discovered footmarks leading toward a dark, heavy door, and he stood looking the place over. It was a tall, narrow place which had, centuries past, been used as a dwelling. What it was at present Warren could not guess, unless it had fallen to the level of the damp, rat infested hovel where crime and disease are bred daily in old towns like Warsaw. Strange carvings of dragons and monsters upheld the eaves and formed the heavy water spouts. The tiny, windows were bare and curtainless. They swung open in the wind that blew from the Vistula.
Warren stood looking. He was all alone in the street.
CHAPTER IV
HOT ON THE TRAIL
The men had disappeared, and there seemed no further need for caution. As Warren approached nearer, he noted the dark, tumbledown building, which looked as though it had been a ruin for centuries, dismal and uninhabited. Only one thing was noteworthy. The door, a stout one heavily barred with ornamental straps of ancient and rusty iron, was fitted with strong, modern hinges, and had been closely fitted in anew frame. Warren's keen eye quickly grasped these details as he sauntered past, and stopped before 'the building, but what he did not see, and could not guess, was the tiny auger hole bored close to one of the iron frets. Behind that hole stood a man in whose cunning brain suspicion lurked; and Warren did not know that after that close scrutiny the trained eye of one of the basest murderers and criminals in Poland would now recognize him, no matter where they met.
Warren knew that he must gain access to the den, but how?
Thinking rapidly, he resolved to wait until the men again left the place, when he would rap at the door, and try to get in on whatever excuse he might need to invent when the moment arrived. He crossed the street, and entered an abandoned building. For two hours he waited in biding, never suspecting the anxious scrutiny he himself was undergoing.
His wrist watch told him that noon was past. There was no sign of life in the street. Remembering the loads of provisions that the men had carried, he decided that they did not intend to come out of their hiding place until nightfall. That would give him time to return, report to the anxious watchers at home, and consult with Ivan and the other Boy Scouts.
With Warren, to decide was to act. He hurried through the shattered streets, wondering what the careful Evelyn had kept for him to eat.