“Trust me to have foreseen that,” Chick replied, rising. “I’ll be ready to leave in ten minutes, and will phone you to-morrow morning.”
“Good enough,” Nick said approvingly. “A reference may be required by the landlady. Take the name of Fred Lamont, and say you are a nephew of Mr. Calvin Page, cashier of the Trinity Trust Company. I will presently telephone to Page and inform him of the situation. He will assure the landlady, in case she rings him up.”
“I’ve got you,” Chick nodded, turning to go.
“I will have decided by to-morrow how Patsy and I can best begin operations,” Nick added. “I think we’ll take a look at the store, for a starter, and at a few of its nine hundred clerks.”
“We may pick the crooks from the nine hundred merely by their looks,” laughed Patsy. “That would be going some, chief, for fair.”
CHAPTER IV.
PICKING UP A TRAIL.
Chick Carter appeared at the door of the Lexington Avenue lodging house about nine o’clock that evening, and his ring was answered by the landlady herself, one Mrs. Hardy, to whom he stated his mission and plausibly explained why he applied to her at that hour.
That Chick made a favorable impression upon the woman, moreover, appeared in that he was invited to enter, though Mrs. Hardy added, a bit doubtfully:
“I have only one vacant room at present, sir, and that may not please you. It is a back room on the second floor.”
“I think it will answer,” Chick said agreeably. “I can not say just how long I may remain in New York, but I will pay you liberally for the time I am here. My name is Fred Lamont. I am a nephew of Mr. Calvin Page, cashier of the Trinity Trust Company. You can talk with him by telephone, if you require a reference, and he will assure you that I am a desirable tenant.[{15}]”