Chapter XII: On the Search

While Patsy was on this search, Chick had been following Lannigan, whose movements about the city seemed to be marked by neither purpose nor intention.

Nevertheless, Chick kept close at his heels.

Nick had found Ida, and from her had learned that she had had another talk with Mrs. Pemberton, and had convinced her that Elwell, the lawyer, whom she had trusted so much, was playing her false.

The principal thing to bring her into that frame of mind was the belief that he had taken the $10,000 check which Mr. Herron had given her from the drawings and models of her husband, with the intention of cheating her out of it.

She was now quite certain that she had done wrong, and was willing to carry out the intentions of her husband and deal with Mr. Herron, as the unsigned articles of agreement provided.

Nick had sought Ida with a view of preparing her for the visit of Spike the next morning.

He had intended to let Ida arrange with Mrs. Pemberton for this, and meant that Ida should, as Mrs. Pemberton, receive Spike.

This was in accordance with the job that Patsy had put up. And finding that Mrs. Pemberton had changed her position entirely in regard to Mr. Herron, he proposed to Ida that he should go with her to Mrs. Pemberton at once, and tell her all that had occurred during the day, and thus show to her the kind of people into whose hands she had fallen.

This was done, and Mrs. Pemberton, under the showing of Nick, saw clearly that her only hope of receiving any profit from her late husband’s work was first in the recovery of the papers of Mr. Herron, and secondly through Mr. Herron.

Becoming convinced of this, she was not only willing but eager to assist in carrying out the plans which Patsy had formed and which had been approved and adopted by Nick.

So it was arranged that when Spike called, Ida, made up for, and pretending to be, Mrs. Pemberton, should receive and dicker with Spike.

That there should be no hitch in this programme, Ida remained in Mrs. Pemberton’s house over night.

It was Nick’s purpose to be in the house also in the morning so that if, as a consequence of those negotiations, Spike brought the drawings, he could seize them.

The matter being thus arranged, Nick returned to his home.

The next morning, before Patsy was fairly dressed, Spike Thomas, followed by Bally Morris, burst into his room in a state of wild excitement and rage.

A glance of Patsy’s was sufficient to assure him that both Spike and Bally were more than half drunk.

They were so excited that for a moment neither could speak, but stood gasping in an effort. Finally Spike blurted out:

“We’ve been robbed.”

Patsy turned sharply on him and said:

“Not of the drawings and models?”

“Yes, de same!”

Patsy’s disappointment was great, but, checking himself, he said, with forced calmness:

“Tell me all about it.”

It was not so easy for the two crooks, and they began such a mixture of oaths, assertions and contradictions of each other that Patsy was forced to stop them; and, telling Morris to be quiet and not say a word, instructed Spike to tell the tale.

Under his statement, it appeared that, being afraid of Lannigan, they had kept away all night, not alone from their usual haunts, but from their homes. They had spent the night in obscure, and, to them, strange places, drinking.

When daylight had come, and they thought it safe to venture into the part of the city where they lived, they had gone to Spike’s rooms to get the drawings and models here hidden away, with the intention of carrying them to a place where they could easily get them if the bargaining with Mrs. Pemberton turned out as Patsy had assured them it would.

But, on reaching that room, the drawings and models were not in the place where they had been deposited.

They had made a most exhaustive search of the room without a discovery or a trace of them, and, having roused up everybody in the house, had pushed their inquiries without receiving any information as to the disappearance of the drawings.

But they had learned that one of the tenants in the house, at a late hour in the previous night, had seen two men enter Spike Thomas’ rooms, supposing one of them to be Spike Thomas.

As neither Spike Thomas nor Bally Morris had been near the rooms during the night, the conclusion was that somebody had entered for the purpose of stealing those drawings and models, and had obtained them.

That was the whole story, although it was garnished with oaths and guesses and charges.

Patsy at once formed an idea as to who those thieves were, but he made no remark to Bally Morris or Spike.

Sending them away, with instructions to hold themselves in readiness to obey any call that he might make on them, he hurriedly finished his dressing and went to the room of Chick, who had quarters in the same house.

Rapping on Chick’s door, he received, however, no response.

The door was locked, and, as Chick was a light sleeper, Patsy felt that Chick was not within his room. In his own room there was a key to Chick’s, as there was in Chick’s a key to his, that each might enter the other’s room when necessity required.

Obtaining that key and entering the room, Patsy saw at a glance that Chick had not occupied it during the night.

“Holy smoke!” he said aloud, to himself, “I don’t like the looks of this. I must tell the chief.”

Dashing downstairs into the street, Patsy went to a drug store where there was a telephone that he frequently used, and obtained communication with Nick at his home.

Telling his chief what had occurred, the third theft of the papers, he also said that Chick had not returned to his room during the night.

“Chief,” said Patsy, over the wire, “I’m going to try and pick up track of Chick.”

“Where?” asked Nick.

“I shall strike Rivington and the Bowery first, then Thirty-fourth Street, and then Forty-second Street.”

“Right,” replied Nick. “Stay about the Bowery and Rivington until I get over there. I shall come over at once.”

Patsy hurried over to the Bowery, and sought the corner of Rivington Street, where the first thing that attracted his attention was a red chalk mark on the pavement.

Many feet had passed over the mark since it had been made, and it required close observation to discover its meaning.

Finally, Patsy determined that it had been made the evening before, and that it was a notice to himself and the chief that Chick was on the shadow, and going up the Bowery.

He crossed to the upper side of the street, and there found another mark, so dim, however, that he could not tell what its meaning was, but the indication seemed to be still pointing up the Bowery.

He went to the next corner, and there found another mark. This was plainer, and still indicated that Chick was going up the Bowery.

“These are last night’s marks,” said Patsy to himself. “If he has kept it up all night, we must get to him in time.”

He pursued his inquiries up the Bowery as far as the old armory, and there, seeing that the marks still tended to the north, returned to Rivington Street to meet the chief.

Arriving on that corner, he found Nick awaiting him.

It did not take the two long to exchange the additional information that had been gained by each since they had parted.

“You have been right from the beginning in this matter, Patsy,” said Nick.

“The two men who stole those papers from Lannigan’s room were Spike Thomas and Bally Morris. They carried them to Spike’s rooms and hid them away there. Still, I yet think we followed the proper course.”

“But the question now is,” said Patsy, “who has got the papers now, and who were the third thieves?”

“Who does Spike think were the thieves?” asked Nick.

“He thinks they are two young toughs who live in the same house, and who saw them stowing away these things.”

“Do you believe that?” said Nick.

“Not hardly,” said Patsy, emphatically.

“Neither do I,” replied Nick, quietly. “But our business now is to find Chick and learn what he has been doing all night.”

Patsy laughed as he looked up at Nick, saying:

“I think that’s the straight road to the papers.”

The two now hurried up the Bowery to its end to pick up the trail Chick had left behind him.

Arriving at the last mark Patsy had observed, they soon discovered that the next one led them up Third Avenue, and, following them, which grew plainer as they proceeded, they were carried to Thirty-fourth Street, where the marks indicated that Chick had passed to the east.

But as they turned to go down that street, Patsy dashed across the street to look at something tied to the rail of the steps leading to the elevated railroad station.

It was a string of yellow cotton cloth.

Carefully examining the pavement, he ran up and down a short distance, like a dog getting the scent, and then, stepping to the curbstone, vigorously beckoned to Nick to come to him.

“Chick has been down Thirty-fourth Street,” he said, “and back again to go up Third Avenue. A sign on the elevated railroad station rail gives us the tip.”

Nick nodded, and the two hurried up Third Avenue.

“This trail will lead us to Forty-second Street, chief,” said Patsy, as they hurried along.

But he had hardly gotten the words out of his mouth when they struck a mark on the sidewalk that sent them down the side street to the east.

It was a change of direction for which neither was prepared.

They did not expect to see any other mark until they reached the corner below, but in the center of the block they came on another which indicated a stop, and a little farther on another sign showing that the chase had been continued.

Looking about, they found that they were directly in front of a livery stable.

One of the stablemen threw open the great doors as they looked. Instantly Nick sprang inside, closely followed by Patsy, and went to a carriage standing on the floor, travel stained, the wheels covered with dust and mud.

On the hind axle was loosely tied a bit of yellow cotton cloth, to which he directed Patsy’s attention.

Turning to the man who had followed them, Nick said:

“That carriage has been out nearly all night?”

“Well, is it any business of yours?” replied the stableman, in a surly tone.

“Answer my question,” sternly demanded Nick.

“Didn’t know that you asked the question,” replied the man.

“Has that carriage been out over night?” asked Nick, in a calm, icy voice.

The man was overawed, and replied that it had been out all night, not getting back until after daylight.

“Did you drive the coach?” asked Nick.

“No; the man who drove it has just gone to lie down.”

“Go call him.”

“What for?”

“Because I tell you. I’m Nick Carter.”

The man started on hearing this, and went to the rear of the floor, where a man was lying on some carriage cushions which he had piled up in the corner.

Nick and Patsy had followed, and Nick said to the man:

“Don’t get up, but answer a few questions of mine. You had a party out last night. How many were there of that party?”

“Two.”

“What did they look like?”

The man laughed, and replied:

“Hard to tell. They changed their looks two or three times.”

“Where did they go?”

“One man came here first and hired the coach,” said the man, “and he was a black-haired, black-eyed man. Then he drove up to Forty-second Street and Avenue A, where he took in another man. Then they drove down to the Bowery and into Fourth Street, where they left the coach and told me to wait for them. They staked me to wait until they came back.

“It was near daylight when the second one came to me and, getting in the coach, went down to the corner of Rivington Street.

“Waiting there ten minutes, the first one came up running, jumped into his coach with something in his hands, and told me to drive like the devil up Fourth Avenue.

“When we got as far as Twenty-third Street, they stopped me, gave me a twenty-dollar bill, and went off down Twenty-third Street to Third Avenue.

“I drove home.”

“Were you followed by anybody?”

“Yes,” replied the man, with a look of surprise. “There was a coach that stuck close to us all night.”

“Did the men you were riding know it?”

“No,” replied the man. “A fellow came out of the other coach when I was in Fourth Street and told me he’d break my head if I let the other fellows know that he was following--and he meant it, too.”

Patsy laughed.

“It wasn’t anything to laugh about,” said the man. “If you’d seen him, you wouldn’t have laughed.”

Nick was satisfied the man had nothing more to tell, and he turned away, followed by Patsy, to whom he said, as he walked across the floor of the carriage-room:

“Chick tied that cloth on the axle in a chance that we might run up against it during the night.”

“No doubt of that,” said Patsy. “Where now?”

“To Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue,” replied Nick. “Chick has been on the track of these people, whoever they are, and it’s dollars to cents that when they left their coach at Twenty-third Street, he left his, in pursuit.”

Nick and Patsy hurried to the point indicated, and, as Nick had foreseen, they found on the corner one of the red chalk marks that gave them the direction.

The signs were fresh, easily seen, showing that they had been made within a recent time.

The signs led them over a crooked way, in which there were many stops, nearly all being in front of liquor stores, but finally ended in Avenue A, on the block below that on which Patsy had twice been in the twenty-four hours previously.

Here the signs ended, nor were there any indications of anything but a stop.

“Surely,” said Nick, “after giving us such a good trail for so many hours, Chick can’t have thrown it up at a late hour.”

“Unless,” said Patsy, “something has happened to him.”

He suddenly darted forward, and bent down to look on the sidewalk near the curb. He picked something up and looked at it, and then ran along a few steps, looking in the curb or gutter.

Nick followed after him, and when he reached him, Patsy said:

“Here’s the trail. Little pieces of this yellow cloth. Chick was on the sneak here, and not in the open.”

Hurriedly, they followed this new trail, and it led them to the middle of the block on which was the house in which Patsy had his “row,” as he called it.

Indeed, when they came to a stop, they were almost opposite the door of that house.

Here, carefully placed against the bottom of a lamppost, was a ball of yellow cloth, about the size of a baseball.

“The end of the trail,” said Patsy.

“And Chick is somewhere about,” added Nick.

“I’ll give a signal that Chick will know if he’s here,” said Patsy. “Hide yourself.”

Nick went into a neighboring doorway, and Patsy, slipping into the street, got between two covered wagons that stood there, backed up to the curb, without horses in front of them.

Suddenly there sounded on the air the sharp, yelping bark of a frightened dog, ending in a prolonged howl.

Patsy slipped back to the pavement and to the cover of some boxes that were piled nearby.

The two waited but a moment, when Chick came down the street, looking in every direction.

Nick gave a low signal, and Chick darted into the hallway where Nick was, Patsy quickly joining him.