Chapter XIX: Chick’s Strange Encounter

The three detectives went to the door, but on reaching it, Merton said:

“I think I’ll have to leave you here. My business will make me stay here, for I see that my man is getting pretty well loaded, and I must keep an eye on him.”

Chick and Patsy therefore shook hands with him, thanking him for the assistance he had given them.

While they talked at the door, a young man and a young woman entered from the street and, walking some distance into the place, suddenly stopped, peered forward earnestly, and then hastily turning, went out into the street again.

The action had been observed by Patsy, who made up his mind that they had seen somebody at the tables they desired to escape. He watched them go to the corner and engage in earnest conversation.

After a moment, they went under the cover of the corner, where Patsy could see that she took off her hat.

A moment later, they stepped out again into the light and, to Patsy’s great surprise, she was a very different looking person.

Before she had been a blonde, and now she seemed to be dark haired.

“She had a wig on,” said Patsy to himself. “Now I wonder what was the meaning of that?”

The couple stood on the corner a little longer, then the two went to the curbstone and, entering a hansom cab, were driven off.

Patsy turned to Chick and Merton, who had been conversing while he had thus been watching the couple, thinking that strange sights were to be seen in the Tenderloin late at night.

Chick, slipping his arm under Patsy’s, now led him to the sidewalk, and the two turned down Broadway.

“Well, Patsy,” said Chick. “I don’t know how much we have gained to-night, but I take it that it is a good deal.”

“Do you think,” asked Patsy, as they walked along, “that the young Englishman, the girl Alice talked of, was our man Ellison?”

“That notion has got into my head,” said Chick. “And if it is so, it will be a big opening for us. We’ve got a way of finding out, however, and that is, by finding if Ellison was on a yachting trip last September.”

“And,” added Patsy, “whether he was in the habit of running over to Philadelphia much.”

“That’s so,” said Chick, “I don’t think there is any use of following up Lannigan and the woman, Ladew.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Patsy. “We might stumble on their associates if we did.”

“Well,” said Chick, “if that is so, we had better go back and watch the front of that place to see them come out.”

They had walked along as they had thus talked and had, therefore, gotten something like two blocks below.

Chick turned about, suddenly, saying:

“You’re right about that, Patsy, and we won’t drop them until we see where they go.”

They walked back hastily until they reached the corner on which Patsy had seen the couple that had attracted his attention.

Here they heard a voice calling some one, and, turning to look, saw a woman beckoning to them from a hansom cab drawn up to the sidewalk.

Although she was in the shadow of the cab, Patsy thought that it was the one whom he had been watching while at the restaurant door, and who he had seen put on a wig.

They went to the cab, and the woman, addressing Chick, said to him:

“I want to speak with you a moment, and alone.”

Hearing this, Patsy stepped aside and Chick went up closer.

“I know who you are,” said the woman.

“But I don’t know who you are,” answered Chick.

“It is not necessary that you should,” replied the woman, “and, as a matter of fact, I don’t intend that you shall.”

Chick looked up at her quickly and saw that the woman was earnest in her manner, by no means coquettish or trifling. He said:

“What is it you want to say to me?”

“I know that you are one of the assistants of Nick Carter,” the woman said. “Your name is Chick, and I know that you are looking for Mr. Ellison, who disappeared so suddenly from the Sanborn house to-day.”

Chick thought rapidly, and concluded that more was to be gained in admitting the fact than in denying it.

“Won’t you enter this cab and talk with me?” said the young woman.

Giving a signal to Patsy which meant that Patsy was to follow wherever he went, Chick called out, loudly:

“Good-night, old boy, I’ll see you some time to-morrow.”

He climbed into the cab and took the seat as the young woman made way for him.

Patsy turned after calling back a good-night and walked hastily up the street until he reached a dark doorway into which he quickly dodged, from which point he watched the cab.

“Tell the driver,” said the young woman, “to drive away from here.”

“Where?” asked Chick.

“Anywhere, so that we will not be so conspicuous.”

Chick told the driver to cross Broadway and, driving to Sixth Avenue, to go down that avenue until the _Herald_ Building was reached.

Having done this, he asked the young woman what was the meaning of her movements.

“I want you to tell me,” she said, “whether you have found anything about the whereabouts of Mr. Ellison.”

“No,” replied Chick, “we have only just begun the search.”

“Do you know why he so suddenly disappeared?”

“No,” replied Chick, “if we did, we would not be long in finding where he is.”

“You will find it difficult to find him. You are following up the Ladew woman for that purpose.”

Chick turned to look at the woman, but her head was turned away, as if she was in deep thought. She continued:

“I don’t think you will find much in following her up. He has broken with her.”

“Then he knew her and was in relation with her?” asked Chick.

“It was only a foolish flirtation on his part,” said the young woman, and Chick noticed that there was a great deal of bitterness in her tone.

She paused for a moment or two, and then went on:

“The Ladew woman is an eccentric person, and she followed him up so that he could not get away from her. But he had to break when his marriage with Miss Sanborn approached; there was a great row.”

By this time Chick was much puzzled to know what relation this woman bore to Ellison and what her interest in the matter was. The question entered his mind as to whether or not this was not the woman who had written to Nick the two letters which had so excited their curiosity.

He knew from what she had said in the beginning that it was useless to ask who she was, or what her name was, but he determined upon a sudden and bold play.

“Who were you trying to strike,” he asked, “when you wrote those two letters to-day to my chief, Nick Carter?”

The young woman started violently, turning to Chick in a frightened manner.

“What do you mean by that? What letters?”

“The letters which warned the chief that an attempt would be made to rob the Sanborns and that a woman was at the bottom of Ellison’s disappearance.”

“How do you know that I wrote them?”

The question was almost gasped out.

“I don’t know,” replied Chick, “but I do know that the chief knows who wrote them.”

“Does he know me?”

“The chief knows everything,” replied Chick. “No sooner had he received those letters than he started to find out who wrote them.”

“And he found out?”

“Of course he did.”

“And it was me?”

The woman suddenly laughed a mocking laugh, and Chick knew that whether the woman had written the letters or not, his play had not counted.

“If you knew as much as all that,” she said, “you would know who I am, and that’s what you don’t know.”

To this Chick could make no reply, for he felt that though her first fright indicated that she was indeed the woman who had written the letters, she had now regained possession of herself and that it was useless for him to hope to surprise her into an admission. He took another tack.

“What interest have you got in this matter?” he asked.

“Wouldn’t anybody be interested in so mysterious a thing as happened at the Sanborns?”

Again she laughed mockingly at Chick.

“How did you come to know me?” asked Chick.

“Are you not a celebrated person, and doesn’t everybody know Chickering Carter, the great Nick Carter’s chief assistant?”

Chick knew now that the young woman was playing with him, and that he did not have easy game before him.

“No,” he said, “I am not so celebrated in the circles in which you move that you would know me.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked the young woman.

“I mean that you saw me for the first time to-day, and that it was at the Sanborn house where I was on duty and you were there as a guest.”

By the way the young woman took this reply, Chick knew that he had scored a point, but did not know how much of a one it was.

“Did you see me there?” she asked.

“Not that I recollect,” replied Chick. “Perhaps it is very wrong for me that I should have failed to observe so charming a person as yourself.”

“None of that, please,” sharply returned the young woman.

She was silent a moment, and then said:

“Yes, I was there, and one of the few who knew that Mr. Ellison left the house.”

Chick started. It suddenly broke on him that the person beside him was one of the bridesmaids, and yet he could not be certain.

While he was thinking this over, she asked:

“Do you know how Mr. Ellison left the house?”

Again Chick thought rapidly, and concluded that he would gain more by answering the question straightly.

“We think,” he said, “that he left concealed by a great cape coat that had been worn into the house by another man, and that he had a wig and beard on to resemble that man.”

“Who was that man?”

“We don’t know.”

“He was left in the house after Mr. Ellison went out. Was he not seen?”

“No, he escaped from the house by a back window into the back yard, and so into the cross street.”

“What sort of a man was he?”

“A man with a pointed, glossy black beard, black eyes, heavy black eyebrows and long black hair, curling a little at the ends.”

The young woman was thoughtful for a moment or two, sitting with her finger to her lips, which she bit nervously, while her brows were knitted.

Chick broke in on her thoughts.

“Was this man connected with the robbery or the attempt to rob?”

“I don’t think so,” said the young woman; “that was another part of it.”

“You mean,” asked Chick, “that the robbery was connected with Mr. Ellison’s disappearance?”

“Oh, no,” said the young woman. “The robbery was a consequence of Mr. Ellison’s knowing certain people----”

She started suddenly, and, facing Chick, said:

“You’re clever. You nearly trapped me. I will confess to you that I wrote both those letters. I learned by accident of this robbing attempt, and tried to stop it by informing Mr. Carter.”

“That’s what you said,” said Chick. “You did stop it.”

“I know nothing of those people,” she said, “except that, through a certain connection, they were attempting to use Mr. Ellison.”

“Do you want Mr. Ellison found?” suddenly asked Chick.

“Yes. I am----”

She stopped and, looking Chick keenly in the eyes, said:

“I will talk no more to-night. I was anxious to know what you have told me. I do not know enough to tell you anything more of importance. I may learn something, and, if I do, I will manage to make Mr. Carter know it. Now, get out, and let me go away.”

Believing that he could accomplish no more, and certain that Patsy was not far away, Chick descended from the carriage, lifted his hat, and walked away.

The hansom cab, containing the young woman, immediately went over to Broadway and, turning up that street, was driven quite rapidly.

But it had not gone the space of a block when another cab drove after it, and Chick saw a hand wave from the window.

Jumping across the street, Chick found a cab on the corner, and, hastily calling the driver, said:

“Follow that cab, and don’t lose sight of it. If you kill your horse, I’ll pay for it.”

And an instant later, and as the clock over the _Herald_ office sounded the hour of two, he was following in hot haste the cab containing Patsy, which, in turn, was following the one occupied by the young woman.