“For that reason or one similar.  He is a man of resources, they may have hoped he would help them to escape the country.”

“If they don’t hide in the German quarter they certainly won’t in the Italian, French or Irish.  What they want is too keep close and rouse no questions.  I think they will be found to have gone up the river somewhere, or over to Jersey.  Hoboken would’nt be a bad place to send Schmidt to.”

“You forget what it is they’ve got on their minds; besides no conspicuous party such as they could live in a rural district without attracting more attention than in the most crowded tenement house in the city.”

“Where do you think, then, they would be liable to go?”

“Well my most matured thought on the subject,” returned Mr. Gryce, after a moment’s deliberation, “is this,—­you say, and I agree, that they have hampered themselves with this woman at this time for the purpose of using her hereafter in a scheme of black-mail upon Mr. Blake.  He, then, must be the object about which their thoughts revolve and toward which whatever operations or plans they may be engaged upon must tend.  What follows?  When a company of men have made up their minds to rob a bank, what is the first thing they do?  They hire, if possible, a house next to the especial building they intend to enter, and for months work upon the secret passage through which they hope to reach the safe and its contents; or they make friends with the watchman that guards its treasures, and the janitor who opens and shuts the doors.  In short they hang about their prey before they pounce upon it.  And so will these Schoenmakers do in the somewhat different robbery which they plan sooner or later to effect.  Whatever may keep them close at this moment, Mr. Blake and Mr. Blake’s house is the point toward which their eyes are turned, and if we had time—­”

“But we have’nt,” I broke in impetuously.  “It is horrible to think of that grand woman languishing away in the power of such rascals.”

“If we had time,” Mr. Gryce persisted, “all it would be necessary to do would be to wait, they would come into our hands as easily and naturally as a hawk into the snare of the fowler.  But as you say we have not, and therefore, I would recommend a little beating of the bush directly about Mr. Blake’s house; for if all my experience is not at fault, those men are already within eye-shot of the prey they intend to run down.”

“But,” said I, “I have been living myself in that very neighborhood and know by this time the ways of every house in the vicinity.  There is not a spot up and down the Avenue for ten blocks where they could hide away for two days much less two weeks.  And as for the side streets,—­why I could tell you the names of those who live in each house for a considerable distance.  Yet if you say so I will go to work—­”

“Do, and meanwhile Schmidt and Rosenthal shall rummage the German quarter and even go through Williamsburgh and Hoboken.  The end justifies any amount of labor that can be spent upon this matter.”