The man who had accidentally knocked against the supposed fop was Elmer Greer.
The rascal walked very rapidly, but his pursuer never lost sight of him.
Greer entered a house in West Twenty-fourth Street—the same from which Mr. Hilton Field had been carried.
It was bitter cold and the detective more than once wished that he had arrested his man before he entered the house.
“I’m in for it,” thought the watcher, “if he doesn’t come out again to-night. He will hardly stay in, though; were it a gambling house he might stay until morning.”
The detective kept up a cheerful conversation with himself for about an hour, when Greer again appeared.
Now he was accompanied by a boyish-looking young man.
Nick drew into the shadow of a doorway and allowed the pair to pass.
Greer and his friend turned up Broadway and entered one of the leading hotels.
The detective was at their heels, and witnessed a meeting between them and a man he knew to be a Wall Street broker.