Nick was satisfied the man had nothing more to tell, and he turned away, followed by Patsy, to whom he said, as he walked across the floor of the carriage-room:
“Chick tied that cloth on the axle in a chance that we might run up against it during the night.”
“No doubt of that,” said Patsy. “Where now?”
“To Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue,” replied Nick. “Chick has been on the track of these people, whoever they are, and it’s dollars to cents that when they left their coach at Twenty-third Street, he left his, in pursuit.”
Nick and Patsy hurried to the point indicated, and, as Nick had foreseen, they found on the corner one of the red chalk marks that gave them the direction.
The signs were fresh, easily seen, showing that they had been made within a recent time.
The signs led them over a crooked way, in which there were many stops, nearly all being in front of liquor stores, but finally ended in Avenue A, on the block below that on which Patsy had twice been in the twenty-four hours previously.
Here the signs ended, nor were there any indications of anything but a stop.
“Surely,” said Nick, “after giving us such a good trail for so many hours, Chick can’t have thrown it up at a late hour.”
“Unless,” said Patsy, “something has happened to him.”