He was in no great hurry to notify Nick or the police. He wished to first make sure that there were to be no more doublings and twistings on the part of Grantley and Siebold.
Apparently, they had reached the end of their New York trail, and Jack was forced into a sort of reluctant admiration for their cleverness.
The man who had driven them—with the unfortunate millionaire—from the Bronx to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, knew only the beginning of their wanderings, and even if the driver who had picked them up several blocks from that point could be found, it would only be possible for him to say that he had carried them to the Pennsylvania Station.
The supposition would have been—but for Wise’s timely cut across their trail—that they had taken a train there; and there would have been nothing to disprove that belief.
So far as Grantley and Siebold, in their proper persons, was concerned, the trail had ended there. It was “Henry S. Peckham,” of Boston, and “Arnold J. Taliaferro,” of Philadelphia, two very different-looking individuals, who had taken the taxi at that point and driven to the dock of the New York & Buffalo Transport Company.
The only way in which Jack could have improved on their tactics would have been to buy tickets for some point on the Pennsylvania and actually to pass through the gates toward the proper train, if not to board it.
That would have added to the complications, and it would have been easy enough to mingle with the crowd from some incoming train and so return to the waiting room and the street.
The tracks they had left were confused enough as it was, however.
They dismissed their cab and entered the company’s tiny office, from which they emerged a little later, after which they went on board one of the barges lying alongside the dock.
It was plain to Wise that all arrangements had been made in advance, and that the two had been expected. The captain of the barge greeted them with respect and led them into the tiny cabin.