As Nick stepped out and bounded down the stairs a bullet struck the wall just above his head.
“I shall have to fine myself for that[{29}] error,” he thought, as he hastened away from the stairway into the crowd.
“If I had kept on my countryman’s uniform they would have regarded that break I made as the result of curiosity on the part of a country chump out to see the town, and I might have learned something more about that twenty-thousand-dollar daylight haul on Wall Street.”
CHAPTER IV.
A HOWLING SWELL.
Promptly at eight o’clock next morning Chick made his appearance at Nick Carter’s private office.
He had the appearance of a man who had had a hard night of it, but was still full of pluck.
“Did everything go all right?” Nick asked.
“Yes, I was reasonably successful.”
“Well, for my part, I don’t think I scored any very brilliant success after we separated. After a good deal of hard work I struck just the place I wanted, and then a table broke down with me, and I got out of the joint just ahead of a bullet.”
After receiving his assistant’s report Nick dressed himself in the costume in which he had first met the Wall Street man, and took his way to that gentleman’s office.