The seedy young man then was hastening down the avenue in Chick’s direction, but on the opposite side of the broad thoroughfare.
Chick stepped into the side entrance of a near store and watched him from one of the front windows.
The suspect stopped short on the opposite corner and gazed sharply in the direction the taxicab had taken. It then had disappeared. The street was deserted, with the exception of a solitary nurse girl wheeling a baby in a carriage. The man pushed the cap from over his brow and hurried on.
Chick left the store a moment later and followed him.[{28}]
His quarry turned the next corner east and soon brought up at a trolley line running out of the city. At a stand near by he bought two newspapers, and then waited on the corner for a car.
Chick noticed in which direction he was looking for it to approach, which told him in which direction the man intended going. He then crossed the avenue, mingling with other pedestrians, and waited on the next corner beyond his quarry. Five minutes later he saw the man board an open car, taking one of the front seats, and Chick presently seated himself on a rear one.
The suspect then was absorbed in one of his newspapers. More than half an hour had passed, when, looking up, he quickly folded it and thrust it into his pocket.
The car then had left the outskirts of the city far behind. It was passing through a rural country, quite thickly wooded in sections, and Chick could see in the near distance a road diverging at a slight angle to the right from that of the trolley line.
“He’s going to drop off at that road,” he said to himself, “It’s favorable for me, all right, in that the woods and shrubbery will afford me some shelter.”
Chick had rightly interpreted the man’s movements, for the latter presently signaled the conductor and alighted from the car at the juncture of two roads, at once walking briskly up that to the right.