He followed Nick Carter and Lord Waldmere from the quarters of the loan company, and something like an hour following their departure after their apparently vain mission, Nolan put in an appearance in the upper section of Amsterdam Avenue, where he had been directed to await the coming of Mr. Morris Garland. If one were to have judged from the expression on Nolan’s sinister face, however, one would have felt reasonably sure that he could not be wisely trusted, that he had sized up the circumstances from his own evil standpoint, and was bent upon taking further advantage of them than he seemed likely to derive. In other words, Nolan appeared to suspect that there was something crooked in the wind, and was resolved to make the most of it. All this would have been even more obvious to an observer of Nolan’s actions upon approaching the appointed rendezvous. He did not wait on the corner, as he had been directed. Instead, he slunk around it, apparently watching the pedestrians within his range of vision in the avenue, and presently he stole over to an opposite doorway, which seemed to afford a more desirable vantage point, and from which he continued his sinister vigil. Presently he sighted among the comparatively few people then in that part of the avenue the man he was expecting. He recognized him at once, though he then was nearly a block away and on the opposite side of the thoroughfare. There could be no mistaking the tall figure and dark, cadaverous face of the head manager of the Imperial Loan Company. Nolan’s eyes lighted when Garland appeared in the near distance. One would have said that he was thinking of the reward for the scurrilous work he had agreed to do. “Here’s where I’ll get mine, all right,” he said to himself. “I’ll make him settle sooner or later. I reckon I’d better hike over to the corner where I’m to meet him, or he might suspect that I----” Nolan’s train of thought was brought to an abrupt end by a sudden, unexpected move of the other. Morris Garland turned from the sidewalk and quickly crossed the avenue. He then walked quite slowly, with his gaze directed to the side from which he had come, and once he paused for a moment to gaze at the door and windows of an opposite house, one of a long brick block. Nolan took a look at it, also, but he could discover nothing warranting Garland’s manifest interest in the house. The door was closed. The curtains at most of the windows were drawn down. Some of the windows were dusty, and the front steps had not recently been swept. The house looked, in fact, aside from its furnishings, as if it was unoccupied. “What’s hit him, now?” Nolan asked himself. “Why is he sizing up that crib? Nobody home but the gas, and that’s leaking out. I wonder----” Another move by Garland broke Nolan’s train of thought. Garland quickly recrossed the avenue, then hastened up to the appointed corner, glancing sharply in all directions.