CHAPTER XVII.
WHAT NICK CARTER KNEW.
For two days Nick Carter and his assistants tried to find T. Burton Potter, but without result.
Chick had not been able to follow the man who escaped from the third-story window of Louden Powers’ house. In the darkness and among the crooked streets that run west from Sixth Avenue, in the neighborhood of Jefferson Market, it was not difficult for a quick-moving fellow like Potter to elude even such a keen pursuer as Chick.
Nick did not reproach Chick for his ill success. After his first disappointment, the famous detective took his usual philosophical view of the set-back. He never mourned over what could not be helped.
It was on the evening of the second day, while Chick and Garvan both were out, trying to get some clew to the whereabouts of the much-wanted Potter, that Nick strolled over to the East Side, and dropped into a rather pretentious saloon—one of the kind that calls itself a “café”—in Third Avenue.
The detective had not disguised himself in the ordinary sense. But he wore a cap, instead of his usual well-brushed hat of latest style, and he had on a long raincoat, which concealed the rest of his attire. It had been raining a little, which gave him an excuse for the raincoat.
There were a number of men in the large, overdecorated barroom, and it was easy for him to step up to the bar and order a Scotch highball without being observed particularly.
He sipped his highball slowly, while his keen eyes gazed over the rim of his glass, taking in the whole assemblage, one by one.
At last he picked out a rather burly man, who was sitting at a table by himself, with an evening paper held up so that only occasional glimpses of his face could be obtained. One of those glimpses had told him who the man was.