“We now will wait developments,” said Nick, when all was ready. “Out with the lights and set this door ajar. If this man has no visitor to-night, Chick, I shall be much mistaken.”
Chick adjusted the door, leaving a crack, through which they could see that of the opposite suite, and both then sat down to wait in the darkness.
The steps of others could occasionally be heard in the corridor, but half an hour had passed when the Englishman returned to his apartments.
Both detectives saw him enter his lighted rooms, consulting his watch when he closed the door.
“That may be significant,” Nick whispered. “He expects some one, perhaps, at an appointed time.”
Nick was right, and eight o’clock brought the expected visitor.
He knocked once, then twice, on the Englishman’s door. The detectives could see him quite plainly in the lighted corridor, a stocky, smooth-shaved man in a plaid overcoat and wearing a fur cap.
Nick could see his face only in profile while he waited, but he felt sure he had previously seen him, though he could not then say where.
When Sir Edward Chadwick admitted him, however, and the stocky man entered and removed his cap, revealing in the bright light of the room a strikingly bald head, as round as a bullet and glistening like a billiard ball, Nick identified him on the instant.
“Great Scott!” he whispered to Chick, as the Englishman closed the door. “That’s Baldy Gammon. That does settle it.”