“’Ello, shipmate,” he said, laying a hand heavily on Nick’s shoulder. “Doin’ biz with that bloomin’ shark?” “’E won’t buy,” replied Nick. “’E wants the bloomin’ earth, ’e does.” “’E’s a shark, a’ Hindian Hocean shark,” roared the sailor. “’E’s got to take a broadside from me the day.” “You ain’t out on no bloomin’ desert island now,” said Nick. “You’ll get in irons, that’s what you’ll get, if you lay alongside of that pirate here. Offered me fifty dollars for a five-hundred-dollar diamond, that’s wot ’e did, blast ’im.” Patsy came up at this moment, and the four wandered away to a drinking place on the Bowery, and sat down at a table. Nick was by no means certain that the men he was with were the ones he sought. They drank rum liberally at Nick’s expense, but did not appear to get much the worse for their libations. They cursed Hartley from keel to topmast, as one of them expressed it, but refused to mention the cause of their hatred. “You’re from Lonnon,” Nick said, after a time. “’Ow is the old town?” Nick knew London like a book, and his reference to the music halls and sailor resorts set the men to talking. “We’re goin’ back when we gets brass enough,” one of them said. “We’ve come over ’ere on a bloomin’ cruise after the wind on the tops of the tall buildings, that’s wot we has, mate.” One of the men sprang to his feet. “Hi’m goin’ after ’im,” he said. “You’re drunk,” said the other. “Let ’im alone.” “Hif you’re afraid to go, Hi goes halone,” was the reply. “I’ll go with you to see the shark,” said Nick. The sailor seized Nick’s hand and almost dragged him to the door. “We’ll board the bloomin’ pirate,” he said. The detective began to think that he had made no mistake in figuring on the movements of the two strange men. “This man is drunk,” he thought, “but not so drunk as he pretends to be. He has probably nerved himself with liquor for an unpleasant interview. If he is the man I suspect him to be, the fact is likely to come out in the talk between the merchant and himself. If he is not one of the sailors who appeared at the Maynard house yesterday, I shall soon know that.” The detective was now in a section of New York where the life of a man known to be in quest of lawbreakers is hardly safe. The lawless ones of the great city often make that section their home when pursued by officers of the law, and will defend each other to the death. The establishment of the diamond merchant was ostensibly respectable, but there were in police records accounts of men and women who had entered the half-glazed door possessed of valuable gems and had never returned to their former haunts. Nick knew that the outlaws of New York boasted that there were hidden cellars and secret rooms and stairways in the buildings of that quarter which no officer had ever been able to discover.