“Great Scott!” thought Patsy, startled. “That wasn’t here when I passed this door. Can it be——”
He did not end the thought. He turned abruptly, darting through the rear corridor and down the back stairway, now in hot pursuit of the bearded man in gray.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CODE TELEGRAM.
Chick Carter was on the lookout for Bart Bailey at seven o’clock the following morning, after trailing him to Philadelphia. He had felt sure that his quarry would not be stirring before that hour, but he soon found that he had allowed himself but little leeway. For Bailey appeared in the hotel office ten minutes later and hurried in to breakfast.
Chick saw plainly that the rascal did not suspect an espionage, but his haste denoted that he had important business in view. Chick determined not to lose sight of him, therefore, and he deferred for that reason and in[{24}] order to gather additional evidence, a telephone talk with Nick, precisely as the latter had inferred.
Chick shadowed Bailey from the hotel about eight o’clock, and the store mentioned by the clerk the previous night. It proved to be a small establishment, occupying only the ground floor and basement of a corner building, with an office in the rear, and to which the crook immediately hastened.
“I’ll not follow him,” thought Chick, sizing up the store from outside. “I may get a line on him from the rear.”
Hastening in that direction, Chick saw that the back windows of an automobile agency overlooked a paved area back of Meyers’ store, and he entered and introduced himself to the manager, confiding the situation to him and requesting the privilege of using the rear windows.
“Why, certainly, Mr. Carter,” he readily consented, after Chick had concluded. “Go as far as you like. I wouldn’t bank much myself, as a matter of fact, on Rudolph Meyers’ integrity. I know he used to run a pawnshop in one of the lower precincts of the city. He opened this store about eight months ago.”
“Soon after the New York robberies began,” Chick nodded.