“Garland’s stenographer,” he muttered. “I thought I recognized her, though she sat with her face averted. Vera Vantoon, eh? I have seen her with Stuart Floyd, of whom Chick was speaking last evening. She may be a connecting link in this chain. By Jove, they are off at a canter, for fair. On the run is right.”
Garland and Vera Vantoon, a pronounced brunette with a striking face and figure, were hurrying up Fifth Avenue, evidently on as important a mission as the detective had been led to suspect.
Nick immediately followed them, though on the opposite side of the avenue.
They had covered less than two blocks, however, when an approaching taxicab swerved to the curbing and a man sprang out, who evidently had seen them from within the conveyance.
“By Jove, there’s Stuart Floyd himself,” thought Nick, stepping into a near doorway to watch them. “He was bound for Garland’s office, as sure as I’m a foot high. I have forced the game, all right, plainly enough.”
The last was occasioned by the earnest conference at once begun by the three, Garland doing most of the talking, and presently slipping a small cloth parcel into Floyd’s coat pocket—a move undetected by Nick because of the intervening taxicab.
Floyd was an erect, splendidly built man with a smoothly shaved, clean-cut face, with regular features of an almost classic cast, an intellectual brow, and remarkably keen and expressive gray eyes. He was scrupulously well dressed and in strict accord with the dictates of fashion. He would readily have passed, as Chick had stated, for a millionaire or a prominent figure in the Gotham smart set. He was very well known, too, from Harlem to the Battery, though for more and varied reasons than any was yet led to suspect.
Nick saw plainly that he could not wisely undertake to overhear what the three were discussing so earnestly, nor did he attempt to do so. He knew very well, or thought he did, and was content to await what followed.
Nick had not long to wait. After an earnest conference lasting about five minutes, Garland and the woman entered the taxicab, which sped rapidly away, while Stuart Floyd walked briskly down the avenue.
“What’s the meaning of that?” Nick asked himself. “They may have gone to make sure the abducted woman is still in safe keeping. Be that as it may, it’s long odds that Floyd will rejoin them sooner or later. I have no course but to stick to him. I’ll head him off, by Jove, and see what he will say for himself.”