The man in the second cab never lost sight of them.
He, too, left his cab at Thirty-ninth Street and walked south.
About halfway between Cottage Grove Avenue and the Illinois Central Railway tracks Parks and Nixon stopped and slunk into a stairway.
Their “shadow” was not twenty feet behind.
While they consulted together, he passed the spot where they stood, and entered the next stairway to the east.
The apartments in the row—an entire block in length—were all exactly alike.
There were three flats in each division, and each flat had seven rooms.
There were in each one a front and a back parlor, a dining room, a kitchen, a bedroom off the front parlor, one off the kitchen and a bathroom off from the hall leading to the kitchen.
In each instance the back parlor and the bathroom were lighted by an air shaft running from the first floor to the roof.
The men talked for some time in the hallway and Nick, for it was he, at last succeeded in getting near enough to hear what they were saying.