This last remark was caused by Nixon stepping out on the walk and stopping two men who were passing.
“They’re a tough-looking pair,” said Chick, “and he seems to be well acquainted with them. I believe they are going away together.”
Instead of starting away, however, the three men stepped into the cigar store and stood there by the counter, Nixon never taking his eyes from the doorway through which Chick had entered the hotel.
Nick began to change his clothes.
In about five minutes he looked like the prosperous advance agent of a negro minstrel company—one of the fellows who always talk show, no matter where they are, and who want everybody with whom they come in contact to know that they belong to the “perfesh.”
“How’s this?” he asked. “This will be apt to take down there in the chophouse, won’t it?”
“I should say so. Shall I go along?”
“Not with me, and not in that rig,” was the reply, and the next moment the detective was on his way across the street to the cigar store, having left the hotel by a side entrance.
It took but a moment for Nick to get into conversation with Nixon, for the crook was quick to recognize “one of the boys,” and Nick declared, on entering the cigar store, that there wasn’t a decent chophouse in the whole city of Chicago.
The two toughs stepped back, and the detective and Nixon were soon on their way to the restaurant.