Half a minute later the glare of its headlight appeared amid the scattered lights of the town, from which it emerged at high speed and immediately began slowing down to make the junction.
“Come on!” Denny cried, leading the way. “She stops only five minutes.”
Nick followed him from the chamber and down the long flight of stairs from the tower. He could feel the structure trembling under the vibrations caused by the heavy train, which then was approaching the long platform and coming to a stop, amid the clanging of the locomotive bell, the furious hissing of steam, and the grinding of the brakes.
Only a solitary man was pacing the platform, carrying a traveler’s grip and a light overcoat. Nick saw at a glance that he was a commercial drummer and not worthy of suspicion.
Several men stepped from the train, obviously to break the monotony of a night journey, but neither the looks or actions of any appeared suspicious. Nick quickly noted the make-up of the train, a baggage car, the express car, a smoker, an ordinary passenger car, and two Pullman sleepers in the rear. He knew that Chick was on the train, but he did not know just where, nor particularly care at that moment.
Denny ran to the locomotive and gave the engineer the dispatch, then hurriedly rejoined Nick and led the way to the express car.
The sliding side door was thrown open from within while they approached, and Denny quickly greeted the man who appeared in the brightly lighted car.
“Hello, Cady, old chap!” he exclaimed. “You’re right on time to-night, all right. Here’s Jack Dakin, track hand, who will ride with you to Shelby. He missed the last local. You don’t know him, I reckon, but he’s all right.”
“Ride with me?” questioned Cady, sharply regarding both.
He was a well-built man of middle age, of sandy complexion, and wearing a full beard. He was clad in blouse and overalls, with a woolen cap pulled over his brow.
Nick did not wait for him to make any objections. He grasped the edge of the door and drew himself up from the platform, saying quietly, while he entered the car:
“It’s all right, Cady. I’ve got a letter to you from President Burdick. Don’t oppose me. Pretend this is nothing unusual.”
Cady seemed to grasp the situation. A fiery gleam appeared for a moment in the depths of his gray eyes, but he drew back to make room for Nick, replying, in quick whispers:
“What’s up? There’s nothing wrong, is there?”
“Wait until we leave here. Don’t question,” cautioned Nick.
“It’s all right, Cady,” Denny quickly assured him, leaning in through the open door.
“Good enough, then,” Cady nodded. “I’ll take your word for it, Tom.”
Nick had strode across the car and seated himself on a packing case, one of several that evidently had been shipped by express and which occupied one side of the car. He noticed that the door of a safe in one corner was closed, and the handle indicated that the safe was properly locked and the combination scattered. He felt reasonably sure that he could, with the help of Dan Cady and Chick, foil and arrest any gang that would attempt the robbery.
The clanging of the locomotive bell told that the train was about to start.
Passengers on the platform scampered toward the cars from which they had emerged.
“So long, Cady!” cried Denny, while he hastened toward the tower stairs.
Cady responded with a gesture and then closed and secured the door of the express car.
A backward jolt, a jangling of bumpers and couplings, a furious hissing of steam, followed by the labored puffing of the locomotive, and the train made way and the lonely junction with its platform and the signal tower were quickly left behind, grim and silent in the twilight of the starry night.
Nick Carter then lost no time in explaining the situation, the outcome of which was far from what he expected, yet what no mortal man could have anticipated.
“Now, Cady, I’ll put you wise to what’s in the wind,” said he, rising from the case on which he was seated. “Here is the letter from President Burdick that will tell you who I am, and a word will explain why I am here.”
Cady opened the letter and read it, then gazed more sharply at the detective.
“Well, say, this is some surprise,” he said bluntly. “I did not dream that you were Nick Carter, though I knew you were in the employ of the road. Do you suspect something wrong to-night, Mr. Carter, that you have boarded my car in this way?”
“More than suspect,” Nick replied. “You are carrying a money package of sixty thousand dollars, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Mr. Carter, I am.”
“Where is it?”
“Locked in the safe, sir, of course.”
“Very good,” Nick nodded. “It will be up to you and me, Cady, to prevent a bunch of bandits from removing it from the safe. Not only to prevent them, Cady, but also to corner and arrest them. Are you game for such an undertaking?”
Cady continued to look Nick straight in the eye.
“Game, sir!” he exclaimed. “You bet I’m game. If they get that money, Mr. Carter, they’ll get it over my dead body. But why do you suspect anything of the kind?”
Nick briefly informed him, and the bearded face of the express-car man took on a more serious expression.
“So you got wise to all that from the two telegrams?” he said inquiringly.
“Exactly,” Nick nodded.
“You’re a keen man, Mr. Carter.”
“Not at all, Mr. Cady. It’s a part of my business to detect such things when they come my way.”
“What other steps have you taken to prevent this job?”
“None of importance,” Nick said evasively. “I think that you and I, Cady, will be able to prevent it.”
“Sure, sir, as far as that goes,” Cady quickly agreed. “Do you know just where and how it is to be attempted?”
“Not how, Cady, but somewhere between here and Shelby.”
“We have not long to wait, then,” Cady declared. “We make the run from North Dayton in twenty-six minutes.”
“Where are we now?”
“We have covered about eight miles. We are in Willow Creek section, a mighty lonely locality, and the next place near which we pass is Benton Corners.”
“Benton Corners!” Nick echoed. “That’s where I rounded up Jim Reardon, and where Jake Hanlon, Link Magee, and Dick Bryan live. I suspected them of having been Reardon’s confederates, but we could not convict them. It may be, by Jove, that they are engaged in this job.”
“Quite likely. They certainly are bad eggs.”
“You know them, then?”
“By name and sight,” Cady nodded. “But we’ll be ready for them. You are armed, sir, of course, and I have a revolver in the safe. I’ll get it and——”
“No, no, don’t unlock the safe,” Nick quickly objected. “The job may be attempted at any moment. I have two revolvers. Take one of them and be ready to hold up the rascals.”
“I’ll be ready,” Cady declared, taking the weapon. “Throw up your hands, Carter, and be darned quick about it, or you’ll get a slug of lead from your own weapon.”
Nick Carter was never more surprised in his life.
Cady had turned the revolver squarely upon the detective, and there was a gleam in his eyes, a vicious ring in his voice, denoting that he meant what he said.
No sane man would have ignored them, and Nick threw up his hands. They stood confronting one another in the swaying car, these two men, Cady with a murderous look on his bearded face, the detective with an expression of sudden terrible sternness, mingled with surprise.
“What’s this, Cady?” he demanded. “I was told that you were true blue and a man of courage.”
“You don’t want to believe all you’re told,” Cady snarled back at him. “Don’t drop your hands, Carter, or I’ll drop you.”
“Are you in with this gang?” Nick sternly questioned.
“You bet I’m in with it. I’m out to get this coin—and to get you, now, since you know so much about——”
The car lurched suddenly on a curve.
The revolver covering the detective’s breast deviated for a moment, as Cady swayed under the sudden lurch.
It was the moment for which Nick Carter was watching. He was as quick as a flash in seeing and seizing the opportunity. His left hand shot downward and grasped the miscreant’s wrist, turning the revolver aside, while his right shot out and closed with a viselike grip around Cady’s neck.
“In with this gang, are you?” he shouted. “You shall pay the price, then.”
But again the unexpected occurred. Another lurch of the car threw both men, then engaged in the terrible struggle, against the wall of the car.
Cady’s beard was torn off and the truth revealed—the man was not Cady.
It was not a substitute package to which the telegram had referred, but—a substitute man!
Something like a half-smothered oath broke from the detective. He swung the struggling ruffian around and forced him against the wall of the swaying car. He could have overcome him and crushed him within half a minute—if help had not been at hand.
All transpired, in fact, in far less time than half a minute.
The covers of two of the packing cases flew upward.
Out of each case leaped a man.
A bludgeon in the hand of one fell squarely on Nick’s head.
The fist of the other caught him on the jaw.
A blow from the supposed Cady landed over his heart.
And under this combined assault, made with all the vicious energy of utter desperation, Nick Carter sank to the floor of the reeling car, bleeding and insensible, with every muscle relaxed.
Chick Carter, in accord with the plans laid out by Nick, was in Amherst that evening in the disguise of a traveling salesman. He was waiting on the station platform when the Southern Limited arrived.
Chick sized up the train as it rolled into the station. He did not definitely know, of course, whether the crook who had sent the telegram from Philadelphia was among the passengers, but he strongly suspected that he was, and he also knew that Nick would board the express car at North Dayton.
“If the crook is on the train and intends to take any active part in the robbery, it’s ten to one that he is in the ordinary passenger car,” Chick reasoned. “He certainly would not be in a sleeper. He would reason, too, that he would be less liable to suspicion than if he rode in the smoker.”
Chick acted upon these theories. He entered the next car back of the smoker, the latter being back of the express and baggage cars, and he took one of the rear seats, from which he could see most of the other occupants of the car. It was about two-thirds filled with men and women, traveling singly or in couples.
Chick pretended to have no interest in any of them. None, nevertheless, escaped his furtive scrutiny during the run of fourteen miles to North Dayton. He could discover none, however, whose looks or actions seemed to warrant suspicion.
Twenty minutes took the train to North Dayton.
Gazing furtively from the window, Chick saw the lights in the signal tower, saw Nick and Denny hasten down the stairs, saw Denny return alone just as the train was starting, which convinced him that Nick then was in the express car, as planned.
Two men who had briefly left the train returned to the car in which Chick was seated. He was a keen reader of faces. He saw plainly enough that neither of the men was a crook, or at least no such crook as he was seeking.
The train rushed on through the starry night.
Chick knew that the time was rapidly approaching when, if Nick’s deductions were correct, the robbery would be attempted.
“I’ll not cut much ice here,” he said to himself, at length. “I think I’ll take a look at the occupants of the smoker. That will bring me nearer the express car.”
He was about to do so when his attention was drawn to a couple three seats in front of him and on the opposite side of the aisle.
One was a respectable-looking, well-dressed man of forty, with grave, dark eyes and a Vandyke beard.
His companion was an attractive woman of about thirtyyears old, with a fair complexion and an abundance of light-brown hair. Her fine figure was clad in a tailor-made traveling costume of bottle green. They were about the last couple in the car to have invited suspicion.
The train had begun to labor on a steep up grade.
The man with a Vandyke beard drew out a cigar and bit the end from it, then said a few words to the woman. She bowed and smiled, revealing a double row of white teeth, and the man arose with a backward glance and smiled at her, then went into the smoker.
Chick watched him thoughtfully, but not suspiciously, when he strode through the aisle and out of the car. Plainly enough, it appeared, the man had excused himself politely to his companion in order to go for a smoke. It appeared like the act of a gentleman.
Chick felt no immediate impulse to follow him, and his attention was again drawn toward the woman. She was moving to a position nearer the lamps, and was spreading a newspaper to read it.
Chick saw that it was a Philadelphia newspaper.
“By Jove, they evidently came from Philadelphia,” he said to himself. “Can it be that they—no, no, that seems quite improbable. No man engaged in a train robbery, or with any interest in one, would be traveling with a woman. Besides, neither looks like a crook, but quite the contrary. She may have bought the paper on the train, or——”
Chick’s train of thought took a sudden, startling turn.
A brakeman went rushing through the aisle in the direction of the smoking car.
Chick noticed now that the train was rapidly slowing down. He heard shouts from the smoker when the brakeman opened the door.
“Great guns!” he muttered, starting up and following him. “Has the trick been turned? Has the job been done, in spite of us?”
Chick hurried through the car and entered the smoker. A dozen excited men were gathered near the forward door and upon the platform and steps. In another moment Chick was among them, and he saw at a glance what had occurred.
The train had been divided. The rear cars of it had come to a stop on the steep up grade.
The forward section, consisting of the locomotive, the baggage car, and the express car, was vanishing around a curve in the tracks more than half a mile away.
A solitary man then was on the rear platform of the express car, though invisible in the darkness—the man with a Vandyke beard.
Scarce two minutes had elapsed since he passed through the smoker. He had not sat down, nor lighted his cigar, but walked deliberately out upon the front platform.
Then, with the speed and dexterity of one familiar with such work, he disconnected the signal cord and the air-brake couplings, set the front brake of the smoker, and then unlocked and threw the lever that uncoupled the two cars. Then he leaped to the back platform of the express car just as it forged ahead, leaving the rear section of the broken train falling swiftly behind.
Leaning out from the platform steps to make absolutely sure of his location, the man then waited until the forward section struck the curve mentioned. He then seized the bell cord and signaled the engineer to stop.
The response was immediate. Almost on the instant the grinding of the brakes was mingled with the roar and rumble of the wheels and the rush of the night wind around him.
Gazing toward the desolate wooded country on the right, he saw that he had timed the desperate work to a nicety.
Three quick flashes of light met his gaze, coming from a point in the woods scarce twenty feet from the railway. He turned and banged twice on the car door with the butt of his revolver.
The three men within were awaiting the signal. The sliding door of the car then was opened. So was the door of the safe. A large leather bag, nearly as large as a letter pouch, was lying on the floor.
Near by, gagged and securely bound, lay Nick Carter, still insensible. One of his assailants of only a few minutes before, now hearing the expected signal, yelled excitedly:
“Out with him, Mauler! The roadbed is sandy. Out with him.”
“Sandy be hanged!” shouted Mauler, the miscreant who had impersonated Cady. “It may be lucky for us if his neck is broken.”
He rolled the detective’s inanimate form from the car while speaking, and it vanished into the gloom outside.
The large leather pouch quickly followed.
The car was steadily slowing down.
There was a bang on the front door—but the door was locked and barricaded.
One after another of three men leaped from the car. The man on the rear platform sprang down and joined them.
They ran back over the roadbed, while the deserted car surged onward for nearly fifty yards before stopping, before the engineer and baggage hands began a more active and energetic investigation.
The four men then were a hundred yards down the track, invisible in the faint starlight at that distance. Other figures appeared from amid the gloomy woods. The burdens lying on the roadbed, one more than the scoundrels had figured upon, were quickly seized and removed—into the depths of the forest that flanked the railway for miles in that locality.
Much can be quickly accomplished by determined men under such desperate circumstances.
Only eight minutes had passed since the Southern Limited had left North Dayton.
Something like three minutes later, Chick Carter, followed by half a score of men anxious to learn what had occurred, came running up the track and joined the engineer and other train hands then gathered in and around the looted express car.
Chick saw at a glance that the trick had, indeed, been turned; also that Nick Carter was missing.
“Great guns!” he exclaimed to himself. “This is strange, mighty strange, and where in thunder is Cady?”
Chick decided to listen briefly before revealing his identity and what he knew about the case, a self-restraint which few would have had under such circumstances, and he very soon determined to say nothing.
For the engineer and train hands, familiar with the desolate section of the country, quickly came to two conclusions; one, that Cady had been overcome by the robbers who had been concealed in the empty packing cases; the other, that he had been carried away with theplunder from the open safe by a gang of desperadoes whom it would be useless to pursue at that time.
Chick knew that they were mistaken, and he also felt sure that he could accomplish nothing then and there. The evidence in the car showed him plain enough that Nick had been overcome by the bandits, and he realized that any attempt at immediate pursuit would be worse than futile.
He sprang into the express car, when the conductor insisted that he must run on to Shelby, and the cars were first run back to couple on the rear section of the broken train.
Chick returned to his seat in the car which he had occupied from Amherst.
The blond woman, apparently wearied by the delay, and with no interest in the occasion for it, seemed to have fallen asleep over her newspaper.
Chick Carter noticed her again soon after resuming his seat, and he was suddenly hit with an idea.
“By thunder!” he mentally exclaimed. “What has become of her companion? Can he have been in the smoker all the while? No, not by a long chalk! He would not have left her here asleep, if she really is asleep. He would have returned to tell her about the robbery.”
“Humph! there’s nothing to this,” he abruptly decided. “I have had that Philadelphia crook under my very eye, this woman’s companion, the fellow with a Vandyke beard. He must have bolted with the gang, too, or I should have seen him on the railway, or in the smoker. All this will be a cinch, by Jove, unless he shows up before we reach Shelby. I’m glad I kept my trap closed. My identity is not suspected, and I will have a clew worth following—the woman!”
Presently, moving from side to side, selecting such persons as hit his fancy, the conductor came through the car and took the names and addresses of several people, explaining that witnesses might be wanted in a later investigation, who were not in the employ of the railway company.
The woman was among those whom he questioned. She yawned and looked up at him with a frown.
“Pardon me,” she declined, a bit curtly. “I do not wish to be brought into an investigation.”
“It may not be necessary, after all,” said the conductor suavely.
“But I know nothing about the affair, except that the train stopped and that a robbery is said to have been committed,” the woman objected. “Besides, my home is in Philadelphia, and it would not be convenient for me to be summoned to an investigation.”
“You would be excused, no doubt, in that case,” persisted the conductor. “Surely, madam, you have no other reason for refusing to give me your name and address.”
“No other reason!” she exclaimed impatiently. “Certainly not, sir!”
“Kindly do so, then.”
The woman hesitated for another moment.
“By Jove, she is deciding whether to give him a fictitious name,” thought Chick, intently watching her frowning face. “She’ll not be fool enough to do so.”
Chick was right.
The woman decided nearly as quickly as he that deception at that time might later make her liable to serious suspicion. She drew herself up a bit haughtily and said:
“Very well, then, since you insist upon it. My name is Janet Payson.”
“Thank you,” smiled the conductor. “And your address?”
“No. 20 Martin Street, Philadelphia.”
The conductor bowed and moved on.
“Martin Street,” thought Chick, instantly recalling the signature on the Dalton telegram. “Martin fits in here, all right. She told the truth, and I’ve picked up a very proper lead. It’s not such a long, long way to Tipperary, after all. We shall see.”
The woman left the train at Shelby, carrying only a suit case, and she accosted a cabman outside of the station.
“Shelby House,” she directed curtly.
Chick was at her elbow and heard her.
Ten minutes later he read her name inscribed on the hotel register: “Miss Janet Payson, Philadelphia.”
It was one o’clock when Chick Carter entered his room in the Shelby House. He removed his coat, hat, and disguise, then lit a cigar and sat down to size up the circumstances and the evidence he had found in the express car.
How was the robbery committed? How did Cady figure in it, and what became of him? How had Nick been overcome, and why had he been carried away by the bandits, assuming that he had not been killed and thrown from the car?
Chick did not believe the last. He would have seen the body when hastening up the tracks. He knew that these crooks would commit murder only as a last resort, moreover, and the evidence in the car did not point to bloodshed and murder.
Chick felt reasonably sure, in fact, that Nick was alive and in the hands of the desperadoes.
“Two empty packing cases and an open safe, opened by means of the combination,” he mused intently. “No force apparent except what must have been required to get the best of Nick and Cady. But could two men concealed in packing cases, and the cases could not have contained more than two, have overcome two such men as Nick and Cady? By Jove, it doesn’t seem possible.
“Nor could Janet Payson’s companion have had any hand in the work done in the express car. He would have had time only to disconnect the train, which he certainly went forward to do. All that was cut and dried, previously planned, and it was done by a man expert at such work.
“Is it possible, then, that Cady is in league with these crooks? Did he hold up Nick and get him with the help of his hidden confederates? Did he open the safe? Did he substitute—stop one moment! By Jove, there was no substitute money package in the car, nor in the safe, or I must surely have seen it. I made a thorough inspection.”
Chick’s brows knit closer under the mental concentration with which he strove to fathom the conflicting circumstances.
“That special-delivery letter certainly mentioned a substitute. It read, I remember distinctly: ‘We’ll have thesubstitute down fine in ample time and the other dead to rights.’
“H’m, that’s not so clear, in view of what has occurred and the fact that no substitute money package was found in the car. It certainly is worded a bit oddly. To have one dead to rights is a term usually applied to a situation, a gang, or a man; not to a parcel, package, or anything of that kind.
“By Jove, it may in this case have been a man. The substitute may have been a man in place of Cady. That would explain Cady’s disappearance from the car. A man made up to perfectly resemble Cady—that’s it, by gracious, as sure as I’m a foot high,” Chick decided. “That’s why Martin worded the letter in that way, that he’d have a substitute down fine, in ample time. A substitute to take Cady’s place in the express car—that’s what!”
Chick’s countenance had lighted. Through this process of reasoning he had deduced the one fact, the one crafty subterfuge, that had made the robbery possible under all of the other known circumstances.
It told Chick, too, how easily confederates of the substitute rascal could have been concealed in the car, and how easily Nick could have been held up and overcome under such unexpected adverse conditions.
“But what has become of Cady?” Chick next asked himself. “He was supposed to be in Philadelphia, of course, in order to make this run. By Jove, I have it! Got him dead to rights, eh? I’ll see about that. I’ll set another ball rolling in this game—one that may knock out a ten-strike.”
Chick sprang up with the last and hastened down to the hotel office. Entering a telephone booth and closing the door, he called up the central exchange and learned that he could quickly get a clear wire to Philadelphia.
“I want the police headquarters,” said he. “The officer in charge.”
Chick had waited only seven minutes, when the operator rang him up and announced:
“All ready.”
“Hello!” Chick called. “Police headquarters, Philadelphia?”
“Yes.”
Distance did not serve to soften the strong, sonorous voice. The wire carried the sound perfectly. The voice was a familiar one to the detective, that of an old friend in police circles, and Chick laughed audibly.
“It’s easy to recognize a voice that rings true,” said he. “How are you, Lieutenant Lang?”
“Fine!” came the answer. “But who are you?”
“Chickering Carter.”
“Oh, ho! Chick, eh?” Lang’s sonorous laugh could be heard. “Glad to hear from you. Where are you?”
“On a case down Shelby way.”
“I heard that Nick was in that section. Something doing?”
“Plenty, Lang, and then some.”
“That just about suits you, I suppose. How can I aid you?”
“I want hurry-up information about a woman.”
“What name?”
“Janet Payson.”
“You’ll not have to wait long,” cried Lang, laughing. “I can supply you right off the reel.”
“Good!” Chick cried. “Do you know her?”
“Only professionally,” Lang responded. “She’s pretty well known here by the boys in brass buttons.”
“What about her, Ned?”
“Fly!” Lang said tersely. “As fly as one often meets.”
“A crook?” Chick inquired.
“Crooked, but not a crook. I don’t know that she has ever been arrested. She devotes her attractions to bleeding any easy mark that comes her way. She is known here as Jaunty Janet.”
“I’ve got you,” said Chick. “Do you know where she lives?”
“That’s a fat question. What am I on the force for?” Lang cried, laughing. “She has a ground-floor flat in Martin Street, No. 20.”
“Correct!” Chick exclaimed. “Do you know anything about her male friends?”
“No, nothing.”
“Listen. I want you to do something for me.”
“Come across with it, Chick, and consider it done.”
“Telegraph me the result. Address me in care of the Shelby House.”
“I will do so. What’s wanted?”
Chick told him and returned to his room, at the door of which he now found—Patsy Garvan.
“Gee! I’ve been on nettles for an hour, ever since the Southern Limited arrived,” Patsy impatiently declared, after greeting him. “I was at the station and heard about the robbery, but I saw nothing of you, or the chief, and I figured that you both were in wrong, for fair. What’s become of the chief? I’ve been here twice in search of you. Couldn’t you head off the job? What do you want for a starter? Why didn’t you——”
“Cut it! Cut it!” Chick interrupted. “Bridle your tongue, or you’ll ask more questions than I could answer before daylight. Hit up a cigar and give me time to explain. You’re not all the mustard in the pot. Didn’t you know that?”
“Sure I know it,” retorted Patsy. “But I’m some mustard, all the same, with a dash of tabasco thrown in. What’s eating you, anyway? Send for an ice bag and cool your block. Your hair may wilt with the heat and look like dead grass. You’d be a bird, then.”
Chick laughed and lit another cigar.
It was two in the morning, mind you, and both had been busy and on their nerves for eighteen hours, a sufficient excuse for impatience and irritability, which really had no sting.
Patsy grinned and sat down, taking a brier pipe from his pocket and deliberately filling it. Not until he had lit it and wafted a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling did he speak again, and then he stared at Chick and said simply:
“Well?”
Chick settled back in his chair and told him what had occurred.
Patsy’s face then had lost its sphinxlike expression.
“Gee whiz!” he commented. “Say, Chick, old top, this isn’t so bad.”
“Come on with it,” Chick replied, knowing he had something to report. “What have you learned that’s worth knowing?”
“Worth knowing—that’s my long suit with four honors,” said Patsy. “I never pick up thirteen measly duckers, no matter who deals the papes. Say, Chick, old chap, listen!”
“Listen, eh? What do you think I’m doing? Do I look like a lay figure with wax ears? I am listening.”
Patsy ended his levity and drew up in his chair.
“You know whose trail I have been on—that of Gus Dewitt,” he said earnestly. “I got the chief’s telephone spiel from the post office, which put me wise to what that special-delivery letter contained, and that was the last I knew of his suspicions and designs. But I had my eye on Dewitt, all right, and I saw him receive the letter and read it.”
“And then?” questioned Chick.
“He then made a move that nearly shook me off his track,” Patsy continued. “He bolted straight for the stable back of the Reddy House. He had a horse out there tied under a shed, and he mounted him without a word to any one and rode out of town as if a dozen devil’s imps were after him.”
“You knew why he went, of course.”
“Sure thing, Chick, since I knew what was in the letter. I knew he had gone to notify the gang that the job was to be done to-night.”
“Certainly,” Chick nodded. “There was nothing else to it.”
“There was enough more to it to keep me on the go until nearly dark,” Patsy protested. “It was up to me to trail him, wasn’t it?”
“Sure,” Chick smiled. “I admit that.”
“Well, it didn’t prove to be soft walking,” Patsy resumed. “I got next to the hostler, two stable hands, and a chauffeur, who hang around there, but they didn’t know him from a side of leather, except that his name was Gus Dewitt and that he occasionally rode into town for a day or an evening.”
“I see.”
“Then a cabby showed up who remembered having seen him ride in one night with Jake Hanlon, at whose place we cornered Jim Reardon for the Glidden murder.”
“At Benton Corners.”
“Sure,” nodded Patsy. “That, of course, put a bee in my bonnet. I reasoned that, if Dewitt and Hanlon were friends, both might be in this job, as well as those two thoroughbred rascals who hang out at Hanlon’s place, Dick Bryan, and Link Magee.”
“Quite likely, Patsy,” Chick agreed.
“I reckoned, too, that Dewitt was heading for Benton Corners, since he had taken that direction.”
“You went out there?”
“I decided to take that chance, for I could see no other way of trailing him. As I was leaving the stable yard, however, I noticed the tracks left by his horse’s hoofs.”
“What about them?”
“One had a little peculiarity.”
“What was that?”
“The shoe on the off fore hoof was different from the others. It had a bar plate, and the mark of it showed plainly wherever it struck yielding soil.”
“I follow you,” Chick nodded.
“And I followed the tracks of that bar-plate shoe,” said Patsy. “There were none in the paved streets, mind you, but I hustled out to the road leading to Benton Corners, and there I found the tracks again.”
“Good work.”
“Knowing I might be mistaken, however, if I assumed that Dewitt had gone to Hanlon’s place, I decided to stick to my trail.”
“A wise decision, Patsy.”
“It took me some time to follow it, but it led me to Hanlon’s place, all right, and, after watching from the woods back of the stable until late in the afternoon, I made a discovery.”
“Yes?”
“Jake Hanlon showed up on horseback and rode into the stable, and Dick Bryan came from the house and joined him.”
“But the discovery, Patsy?”
“Bryan had it in his hand,” said Patsy dryly. “The special-delivery letter and the disguise he had worn as Gus Dewitt.”
“Bryan and Dewitt are the same, eh?”
“Yes, and Dalton thrown in,” declared Patsy. “Bryan has been posing in all three characters. He’s a pretty slick gink at that, too, I judge, from the confidence with which he spoke when talking with Hanlon about it.”
“You could hear what they were saying?”
“Only for a few moments. Bryan showed him the letter and the telegrams, and they then hurried into the house. Out they came in about ten minutes, however, both with revolvers and shotguns, and then they mounted their horses and rode off to the north.”
“To join others of the gang, no doubt,” said Chick.
“That’s how I sized it up.”
“Surely.”
“Hanlon spoke of another crib, but he said nothing definite, and I knew only the direction they took,” Patsy went on. “I felt pretty sure that you and the chief would head off the robbery, you see, so I hiked back to Shelby to hunt you up and report. Now, hang it, I learn that the job has been pulled off, and you think the chief is in the hands of the rascals.”
“I have hardly a doubt of it,” said Chick.
“It won’t be easy, then, to corner this gang and recover their plunder,” Patsy dubiously declared. “They’ll know we are after them and——”
“But not what you have discovered,” put in Chick pointedly.
“That’s true. That may help some,” Patsy allowed. “If we could only find out what other crib Hanlon meant and where it is located, and devise some way to get there before they can cover their tracks and dispose of Nick——”
“Stop a moment,” Chick interrupted. “I think we can accomplish both.”
“You do?” Patsy’s countenance lighted.
“I certainly do. We’ll put something over on these ruffians, Patsy, that will have failed to enter their heads. We’ll get them, all right, take it from me.”
“What do you mean? Explain.”
“Pull up here and listen,” said Chick, tossing away his cigar.
Miss Janet Payson was seriously startled about ten o’clock the following morning, when a somewhat insistent knock sounded on the door of her apartments in the Shelby House.
The same was true of her companion, who had enteredabout half an hour before, after leaving his touring car in a neighboring street, in charge of a chauffeur and another man, as if their mission was one that required at least a moderate degree of caution.
Janet Payson’s companion was the man with a Vandyke beard—but he had removed it and slipped it into his pocket since entering.
The removal of the disguise did not improve him. It had served to hide a thin-lipped, sinister mouth, a bulldog jaw and chin, and the hard lines of a desperate and determined face.
That he was all that his face denoted, moreover, appeared in the celerity with which he whipped out a revolver from his hip pocket the instant the knock interrupted the subdued conversation with the woman. At the same time he muttered quickly:
“What’s that? Who the devil can that be?”
Janet Payson turned pale, or as pale as the tinge of rouge in her cheeks permitted, and she laid her finger on her lips, then pointed to the adjoining bedroom.
“Keep quiet, Jeff,” she whispered. “I’ll find out.”
The man, Jefferson Murdock by name, seized his hat and tiptoed into the bedroom and set the door ajar. Then he waited and listened, revolver in hand.
The knock sounded again on the hall door.
“Presently,” cried the woman. “Who’s there?”
She tore open the collar of her waist while speaking, receiving no reply, then stepped to the door and opened it.
“I had not finished dressing,” she said impatiently, hastening to rehook the collar. “What do you want?”
Chick Carter was the person who had knocked, and none would have recognized him. Though fairly well clad and somewhat flashily, he had the sinister aspect of an East Side tough, or a man capable of any covert knavery.
Chick removed his hat and smiled, nevertheless, replying as politely as one would have expected:
“I want to talk with you for half a minute, or mebbe longer, Miss Payson, if you’re alone here.”
“Talk with me?” said Janet, with brows knitting. “What about, and who are you?”
“My name is Kennedy, Jim Kennedy, and I live in Philadelphia,” said Chick, dropping his voice suggestively. “I happened to be on the train last night when——”
“Wait! Stop a moment,” Janet curtly interrupted, drawing back. “Step inside. I don’t care to be seen talking with you. Close the door.”
“Sure,” Chick vouchsafed, with sinister intonation. “That hits me all right. It’s just what I wanted. But none would think less of you for talking with me, as far as that goes—not much!”
There could be no mistaking such a beginning as this, and the woman’s white face lost much of its beauty under the vicious scowl that settled upon it.
“What do you mean by that?” she demanded.
“You ought to know,” said Chick.
“Well, I don’t know,” Janet retorted.
“Let it go at that, then. Take it for what it’s worth.”
“See here, you insolent——”
“Oh, cut that!” Chick interrupted, unruffled. “Don’t go into the air because I’m not handing you a pasteboard with my monaker on it. I don’t happen to have one. I ain’t a gink what carries his name pasted in his lid. My name is Kennedy, plain Jim Kennedy, and I’ve got a word to say to you on a little matter of business. That’s why I’m here, Miss Payson.”
Chick coolly took a chair while speaking, the same from which Murdock had just arisen. He noticed at once that both wooden arms of the chair were slightly warm, where the hands of some person had been recently resting on them. Though he already knew that the woman was not alone, having been watching her apartments since early morning, he looked up at her and quickly added:
“I’ve taken your chair, mebbe.”
“No,” she replied, pointing to one near her dressing stand. “I was sitting there. See here, Mr. Kennedy, what’s the meaning of this visit? Come to the point.”
She had appeared in doubt up to that time, uncertain what course to shape; but her voice and countenance now denoted that she anticipated what was coming, that she suspected the mission of her sinister visitor, and that she also felt fully equal to meeting the situation. She sat down quite abruptly and repeated:
“Come to the point. What do you want here?”
“That’s quickly told,” Chick replied. “It’s about the little job that was pulled off last night.”
“What job, Mr. Kennedy?”
“That train robbery. You know all about it.”
“All about it!” Janet exclaimed. “What do you mean by that? I know nothing about it—except that there was a robbery.”
“Oh, yes, you do,” Chick insisted. “Nix on that. I happened to be on the train, and I’m wise to something that no other gazabo noticed.”
“What was that?” she coldly questioned.
“There was a gink with you in the car who didn’t show up after the robbery.”
“What of that?”
“He quit you just before the trick was turned, and he didn’t come back to you. He was no come-back kid,” Chick declared. “He went through the smoker and uncoupled it from the express car. He was the gink who did the job, or one of the bunch—and you know it.”
The woman heard him with hardly a change of countenance.
“You are very much mistaken,” she said icily.
“About what?”
“My knowing anything about the robbery—or the man you mention.”
“He was with you, wasn’t he?”
“He sat with me, yes,” Janet coldly admitted. “But that signifies nothing. There was no other vacant seat when he entered the car, so he sat with me, and we entered into conversation that did not end until he left me and went into the smoker. That’s all I know about him, all I care about him. He was a total stranger to me.”
Chick grinned derisively and shook his head.
“Say, do I look as if I’d swallow that?” he asked, with sinister contempt.
“You may swallow it, or not, as you like,” Janet retorted, with apparent indifference.
“It might slip down the red lane of a country parson, but not down mine,” Chick went on. “You see, Miss Payson, I haven’t knocked round Quakertown all my life for nothing. I know all about you. I’ve seen you round town for years.”
“Suppose you have,” sneered Janet. “What of that?”
“Nothing of it, barring that I know all about you,” Chick informed her, more impressively. “Your name isJanet Payson, sometimes Jaunty Janet, and you live in a ground-floor flat in Martin Street. That’s what. You see, I am onto your curves, and I’m here to knock out a homer. That’s me!”
“See here——”
“Nix on the see-here gag!” Chick interrupted. “You wait till I’ve said my little verse. Then you can have your spiel and go as far as you like. You ain’t any main dame in the social game. You’re only the little casino in a soiled deck. Your word wouldn’t go in a Quaker meetinghouse, say nothing of a criminal court. I know! I’m wise! You can’t put nothing over on me.”
“Well, what are you coming to?” scowled Janet with the rouge glaring more vividly on her pale cheeks.
“That’s right. That’s more like it,” Chick went on, with a sinister nod. “Now we’re getting down to brass tacks. Pass up the grouch and let’s talk business.”
“Well?” snapped Janet.
“You know what I want. There was a slick job pulled off last night, and somebody has got sixty thousand bucks in his jeans. I want a bit of it.”
“You do!” Janet sneered. “You’ll take it out in wanting, then, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Mebbe so, though I have a hunch that you’ll change your mind,” Chick retorted. “If you don’t, it will be all over but the settling.”
“What do you mean by settling?”
“You know what I mean, all right. Mebbe, though, you don’t quite get me; I’ll make it so plain that a blind monkey could see it in the dark. I’m out for the coin myself, you know, when I see a chance to lift any. I’d be a bird if I let this chance slip by.”
“You mean——”
“I mean all I am saying,” Chick cut in, with ominous mien. “Understand, though, I’m not a gink who would betray a pal. I wouldn’t squeal on a friend if I was strung toes up. Not on your tintype. But I’m not a pal of yours, nor of any of the bunch. I wasn’t in this job, I’m only looking to get in.”
“You mean that you are here to blackmail me,” snapped Janet. “Is that it?”
“Blackmail be hanged!” growled Chick derisively. “You can’t blackmail an ink spot. You know what I want—and I’m going to have it.”
“I’ll know when you tell me,” frowned the woman. “Not till then.”
Chick jerked his chair nearer to that in which she was seated. There was, indeed, no mistaking his meaning, if one was to have judged from outward appearances. His hangdog face wore an expression that none could have misinterpreted.
“I’ll tell you what I mean, all right,” he replied, with more threatening intonation. “I want a bit of that coin and I’m going to have it. When I get it, I’ll go about my business and keep my trap closed. I’ll never squeal. I’ll never yip till the day of judgment. You can bank on that, and bank on it good and strong.”
“I can, eh?”
“That’s what.”
“And suppose you don’t get it?” questioned Janet, with lowering gaze at him. “What then?”
“You’ll get yours, instead.”
“You mean, I take it, that you’ll inform the police.”
“That’s just what I mean,” Chick nodded. “Unless some one comes across with the coin, it’s you for the caboose. I’ll have a bull after you inside of half a minute. I’ll tell all I know about the job and all I know about you. Your story wouldn’t stand washing in distilled water. The gink with the Vandyke whiskers did the job, and you know it. I’ll hand all this to the bulls, unless I get mine, and I’ll lose no time about it. That’s all. It’s up to you, now. What d’ye say?”
“I say that you may go to the devil, Kennedy, and do your worst,” snapped Janet, with eyes flashing. “I say——”
“Stop a moment! Stop a moment!” cried Murdock, stepping into the room. “I reckon it’s time for me to have my say—or this!”
Chick swung around in his chair and found himself gazing—into the black muzzle of a leveled revolver.
Chick Carter did not appear much disturbed by the threatening turn of the situation. He gazed at the weapon, then at the man, without stirring from his chair.
Murdock had not replaced his disguise. His dark-featured face wore a look as threatening as his weapon. He added coldly, nevertheless, while Janet Payson shrank back with a look of alarm:
“You keep quiet, Janet, and let me settle this fellow. I ought to let the gun do the talking, Kennedy, but I’m not going to. I only want to show you that I could turn you down on the spot, if I was so inclined.”
Chick recognized the man in spite of his changed appearance, and he had known from the first that he was in Janet’s apartments. He pretended to be surprised, however, and to have no idea that this was her companion of the previous night on the train. He drew up in his chair and replied, frowning darkly:
“You have got the drop on me, all right, but——”
“But I don’t intend to take advantage of it,” Murdock interrupted, thrusting the weapon into his pocket. “There is a better way and a less risky one to settle this business. I have heard all you said to this woman, Kennedy.”
“She told me she was alone,” growled Chick, with an ugly glance at her.
“No, she didn’t,” said Murdock, taking a chair. “You took it for granted. I heard all she said. That’s neither here nor there, however. The question is, Kennedy, what do you really intend doing?”
“You heard what I said,” replied Chick, with a defiant stare at him.
“You really mean it, do you?”
“That’s what. I’m going to have my bit out of this job, or there’s going to be something doing.”
“You will tell all you know, eh?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“But you can be bought?”
“Sure thing. That’s what I’m here for.”
“I see,” said Murdock, with a nod. “But why does it devolve upon her to buy your silence? That’s up to the person who committed the crime. Assuming that you are right, that the man you saw with her on the train had a hand in the robbery, she certainly played no part in it. It’s hardly fair to ring her into it, or to ask her to buy your silence.”
“I’m out for the coin, and I’m going to get it,” Chick grimly insisted.