But Mr. Jerry Nolan was nothing if not crafty. He did not so much as glance back before turning the corner. Nor did he then pay further attention to Garland to see whether he left his house.
As he was passing that at which the pawnbroker had paused to gaze, however, Nolan glanced furtively at the door. He saw there was no name plate on it. He saw the dust on the steps and the soiled windows on the second floor, and he came to a perfectly natural conclusion.
“There’s been something doing in this crib, or that Pawnee Indian would not have had so much interest in it,” he said to himself. “It appears to be unoccupied. I’ll nose around a bit and make sure of it. Then I’ll find out whether there’s only ten bucks for me in this job.”
Nolan fixed in his mind the precise location of the house by counting from the end of the block. He then walked around to the next street, from which he stealthily picked his way through an alley until he could see the back of the suspected dwelling.
It would have confirmed the suspicions of any discerning man. The drawn curtains, the soiled windows, the closed shutters of those in the rear yard—all denoted that the house, though furnished, had not been recently occupied, unless for some covert purpose.
Nolan promptly came to another conclusion—that he would sneak into the house and see what more he could learn.
He went about it with the skill and caution of a professional sneak thief, which he looked more like than anything else. He crept through the alley and into the yard back of the house, where he crouched briefly under the high board fence to study the back windows of all the near dwellings.
Feeling sure that he had not been seen, he then took several skeleton keys from his pocket, quickly selecting one which he thought would serve his purpose.
It did.
Within half a minute Nolan had quietly unlocked the rear door and stepped noiselessly into a back basement hall, closing the door after him.