Given a definite trail to follow, Jim Farland was one of the best trackers in the business. He liked to know his quarry by sight, and conduct the hunt in a proper manner. And so he rejoiced, that now he was following a person he believed to be interested in some way in the Shepley case.
The limousine went up Fifth Avenue toward Central Park, and the taxicab with Jim Farland inside followed half a block behind. Farland did nothing except look ahead continually and make sure that his chauffeur did not lose the other machine. He wanted to discover, first, where Miss Kate Gilbert was going, and after that he wanted to acquire all the information he could concerning her.
There was little traffic on the Avenue at this hour, and the limousine made good progress. It curved around the Circle and went up Central Park West. In the Eighties it turned off into a side street, and finally drew up to the curb and stopped. The taxicab came to a halt a hundred feet behind it. "Wait," Jim Farland instructed the chauffeur, showing his shield. "Wait until I come back, even if I don't come back until morning. You will get good pay, all right."
The chauffeur settled back behind his wheel, and Farland stepped to one side in the darkness and watched. He saw an elderly gentleman emerge from the limousine and turn to help Kate Gilbert out. Then the elderly gentleman got into the car again and was driven away, and Kate Gilbert went into the apartment house before which the limousine had stopped.
Detective Jim Farland hurried forward, but when he came opposite the apartment house he slowed down and walked slowly, glancing in. It was not an apartment house of the better sort. The lobby was small, there was an automatic elevator, and no hall boy was on duty, that Farland could see. There was a row of mail boxes against a wall, with name plates over them.
Farland went up the steps, opened the door, and stepped inside the lobby. He walked across to the mail boxes and began looking at the names. He found some one named Gilbert had an apartment on the third floor, front.
The stairs were before him, and Farland was about to start up them when a door leading to the basement was opened, and a janitor appeared. He was an old man, bent and withered, and he looked at Farland with sudden suspicion.
"You want to see somebody in the house?" he asked, in a voice that quavered.
"I want to see you," Jim Farland answered.
"What about, sir?"