Doctor Guelpa had come hurrying around the near corner, and was evidently returning to the hotel.
Chick shadowed him again, but not without a quick survey of the opposite house and the adjoining buildings.
“I’ll swear he did not come out of that house,” he said to himself. “There is no way of getting to a back entrance from the avenue. There may be an alley leading in from the side street. Either that, or he went through the first house around the corner. Later, by Jove, I may discover which. The game seems to have just broken cover.”
Chick followed Guelpa back to the hotel and saw him enter his suite.
Not content with that, wondering what he might be doing, he crept to the door and peered through the keyhole.
The aperture, though limited, commanded a view of the parlor and the bedroom directly beyond it. Both were brightly lighted—and Chick saw enough to warrant all of the suspicions he had attributed to Nick.
He saw the man within discarding his Guelpa disguise and transforming himself into a counterfeit of Chester Clayton.
“Thundering guns!” he said to himself. “This does settle it. But what’s his next move?”
Chick concealed himself to wait and see.
Ten minutes later Guelpa stole down the side stairs and out of the house. He was just in time to catch a passing taxicab.