CHAPTER IV
THE SHADOW HEARS
THE man who had watched Harry Vincent enter the Metrolite Hotel now wended his way toward Broadway. When he reached Manhattan’s most famous canyon, he mingled with the after-theater crowd and followed a rapid, devious course.
He became an insignificant figure among thousands, and so artfully did he weave his path that even the most capable sleuth could not have kept upon his trail.
For the wolfish-faced individual was a man who knew the methods of the underworld, and he used a definite routine wherever he went. He entered a speakeasy, several squares above Forty-second Street.
There he paused a few moments, and left by a side entrance known only to the chosen few. At last, satisfied that no one could possibly be noticing him, he swung again from Broadway and strode westward until he arrived at an old apartment building.
Here, after a quick, covert glance, the man entered a darkened hallway and moved noiselessly up carpeted steps, disdaining to use the automatic elevator in the building.
Halfway up the stairs, he threw another suspicious glance back in the direction from which he had come. He saw only the silent, dark hall. As he reached the head of the stairs, he grinned wolfishly.
Perhaps that grin was in acknowledgment of his own cleverness. But if so, he had grinned without good reason.
The moment after he had disappeared from the top of the stairs, there was a movement in the hallway. A shadowlike form detached itself from the darkness and flitted toward the stairway. Up it came, moving with amazing swiftness, following the very path that the man had taken.