A fourth was a dark, finely formed woman in the twenties, whom Patsy instantly recognized as a familiar character in the Tenderloin, one Lucy Devoll, a girl formerly intimate with the Vantoon sisters, then in prison for their complicity in two of the crimes committed by Stuart Floyd.
The fifth person was none other than the notorious crook himself—Stuart Floyd.
He looked white and pinched, and there was an abnormal glitter in his eyes that told of feverish anxiety and physical consumption, of the horrible price paid for traveling the downward path.
“Eureka!” thought Patsy, when he discovered these worthies. “I’m in right, if I can only stick here. If worse comes, I can wriggle around and drop into the yard. It’s not more than ten feet.”
Patsy lost nothing that was said in the room while these few thoughts passed through his mind.
Stuart Floyd was talking, addressing the girl who had entered only a few minutes before.
“What type of man is he, Nan, the one who called this morning?” he asked.
“A decent-looking, muscular man, smooth shaved,” said Nan Levine, as she was called. “He’s about medium complexion.”
“It might have been Chick Carter,” said Floyd, with knit brows. “You are sure it wasn’t Nick himself?”
“I’m dead sure of that,” nodded Nan. “I saw him over the baluster rail at two this morning, and also Patsy Garvan, as you call him. ’Twasn’t either of them who called this morning, and I don’t reckon he was a detective.”