“We’ll board the bloomin’ pirate,” he said.
The detective began to think that he had made no mistake in figuring on the movements of the two strange men.
“This man is drunk,” he thought, “but not so drunk as he pretends to be. He has probably nerved himself with liquor for an unpleasant interview. If he is the man I suspect him to be, the fact is likely to come out in the talk between the merchant and himself. If he is not one of the sailors who appeared at the Maynard house yesterday, I shall soon know that.”
The detective was now in a section of New York where the life of a man known to be in quest of lawbreakers is hardly safe. The lawless ones of the great city often make that section their home when pursued by officers of the law, and will defend each other to the death.
The establishment of the diamond merchant was ostensibly respectable, but there were in police records accounts of men and women who had entered the half-glazed door possessed of valuable gems and had never returned to their former haunts. Nick knew that the outlaws of New York boasted that there were hidden cellars and secret rooms and stairways in the buildings of that quarter which no officer had ever been able to discover.
The sailor entered the store and advanced toward the rear, which was dimly lighted by a yellow jet of gas, the daylight which came through the dusty glass in front not penetrating into the back of the long room. There, on a high stool at a standing desk, bent over the pages of a great book of accounts, was a man with iron-gray hair and stooping shoulders. He glanced up as the two men approached, and Nick made a mental note of the keenest black eyes he had ever seen under a mass of gray hair.
The sailor stepped up to the desk and laid his arm insolently on a pile of books at the merchant’s elbow. Then he steadied himself and glared at the figure before him.
“You are here again, are you?” asked the merchant impatiently. “I told you to keep away from here.”
“You know wot I come for,” said the sailor sullenly.