“I agree with you,” said Chick. “That would be the natural quarter for the rascal to turn. I’ll have an eye on the place within half an hour.” “Very good.” “What are your own plans?” “I’m going after Captain Casper Dillon,” said Nick, with ominous intonation. “I have opened the way to that, also. I propose to clinch my suspicions without further delay. I want that miscreant traitor at the outset, and I’m going to get him.” “That’s the stuff, chief,” cried Patsy. “He ought to be nailed right off the reel.” “He’ll be nailed, Patsy, all right,” Nick grimly answered. There was the usual gathering of spectators in the municipal court that morning. Some persons have a morbid interest in watching the wheels of justice revolve, in viewing culprits vainly squirming to slip through the meshes of the legal net, and to witness their condemnation to righteous punishment. Among them that morning was a sinister-looking fellow in a baggy brown suit and woolen shirt, who would really have looked more in place in the prisoner’s dock than in one of the chairs allotted to spectators. He had no interest in the proceedings, nevertheless, until the case of Thomas Carney was called and that worthy put in an appearance--a stocky, dark man of thirty, wearing a scowl evincing his resentment of his long detention in custody. Much to his surprise, no doubt, as well as that of his lawyer, the court was favorably impressed with the argument of his attorney, and decided there were no grounds for longer holding the prisoner, and Mr. Thomas Carney was forthwith discharged. Patsy Garvan, the spectator in baggy brown, then had disappeared from the courtroom. He was watching from across the street the door from which Carney would emerge, and he had not long to wait. Carney came out with his lawyer, with whom he shook hands before they parted. He then hurried through Sixth Street, bringing up in a few minutes near Center Market, where he was met by a seedy fellow who emerged from the market, and who evidently said a few words to him while passing. Patsy was not near enough to hear him, however, though he detected the fact and came to a quick conclusion. “That fellow was waiting for him and gave him instructions from some one,” he said to himself. “It has started him in a new direction. It’s money to marbles that he was directed where to meet Margate.” Patsy was right to that extent. Carney appeared, however, to have no thought that he might be followed, which made it perfectly easy for Patsy to shadow him. Pausing only once in a barroom, where he gulped a stiff drink of whisky, Carney shaped a course that took him into one of the lowest parts of the city, where he brought up at an inferior wooden house adjoining a narrow court making in next to the bare back wall of a brewery.