On the way down we speculated much on the possibility that we might be going on a wild goose chase.  But the very circumstances of the call and the promptness with which the man who had called had seemed to sense when something was wrong and to ring off seemed to point to the fact that we had uncovered a good lead of some kind.

After a quick run downtown through the deserted avenues, we entered a series of narrow and sinuous streets that wound through some pretty tough looking neighborhoods.  On the street corners were saloons that deserved no better name than common groggeries.  They were all vicious looking joints and uniformly seemed to violate the law about closing.  The fact was that they impressed one as though it would be as much as one’s life was worth even to enter them with respectable looking clothes on.

The further we proceeded into the tortuous twists of streets that stamp the old Greenwich village with a character all its own, the worse it seemed to get.  Decrepit relics of every style of architecture from almost the earliest times in the city stood out in the darkness, like so many ghosts.

“Anyone who would run a garage down here,” remarked Garrick, “deserves to be arrested on sight.”

“Except possibly for commercial vehicles,” I ventured, looking at the warehouses here and there.

“There are no commercial vehicles out at this hour,” added Garrick dryly.

At last our cab turned down a street that was particularly dark.

“This is it,” announced Garrick, tapping on the glass for the driver to stop at the corner.  “We had better get out and walk the rest of the way.”

The garage which we sought proved to be nothing but an old brick stable.  It was of such a character that even charity could not have said that it had seen much better days for generations.  It was dark, evil looking.  Except for a slinking figure here and there in the distance the street about us was deserted.  Even our footfalls echoed and Garrick warned us to tread softly.  I longed for the big stick, that went with the other half of the phrase.

He paused a moment to observe the place.  It was near the corner and a dim-lighted Raines law saloon on the next cross street ran back almost squarely to the stable walls, leaving a narrow yard.  Apparently the garage itself had been closed for the night, if, indeed, it was ever regularly open.  Anyone who wanted to use it must have carried a key, I surmised.

We crossed over stealthily.  Garrick put his ear to an ordinary sized door which had been cut out of the big double swinging doors of the stable, and listened.

Not a sound.

Dillon, with the instinct of the roundsman in him still, tried the handle of the door gently.  To our surprise it moved.  I could not believe that anyone could have gone away and left it open, trusting that the place would not be looted by the neighbours before he returned.  I felt instinctively that there must be somebody there, in spite of the darkness.