He figured for a few seconds, then put a pencil point on a certain spot on his map.
"There!" he muttered. "It's the hotel, the exact spot."
Suddenly he started. There came the rattle of a key in the door.
"Oh!" he exclaimed as Coles Masters shoved the door open, "it's you. I'm glad you're here. Got something I want to look into. Want to bad. Mind if I take an extra hour?"
"Nope."
"All right. See you later." With a bound he was out of the door and down the stairs.
"That boy," muttered Coles Masters, with a grin, "will either die young or become famous. Only Providence knows which it will be."
Curlie did not leave the elevator at the first floor. Dropping down to the sub-basement, he wound his way in and out through a labyrinth of dimly lighted halls, at last to climb a stair to the first basement. Then, having passed into his accustomed eating place, he paused long enough to purchase a Swiss cheese sandwich, after which, with cap pulled well down over his eyes, he made his way up a second flight of stairs into the outer air.
He shivered as he emerged into the open street. Whether this chill came from the damp cool of the night or from nervous excitement, he could not tell. The memory of the whispered warning bore heavily upon his mind.
Turning his face resolutely in the direction of the hotel, he walked three blocks, then hailed a passing taxi. When the taxi dropped him, a few minutes later, he was still four blocks from the point of his destination. Covering this distance with rapid strides, he came to the rear of the hotel. There, dodging past a line of waiting taxis, he came at length to a dark corner where a stone bench made an angle with the wall of a building directly behind the hotel.