Chapter VII: Into a Trap

“Andy Margate is the man we must get. He is the rascal who now has the government plans. Andy Margate is the man we must get--and lose no time in getting him.”

These forcible declarations came from Nick Carter soon after eight o’clock on the morning following his impressive interview with Harold Garland. They were addressed to Chick and Patsy, then in their suite in the Willard immediately after breakfast.

“But how to get him is the question,” Chick replied. “Patsy and I have searched every inch of advertising space in every newspaper, but we could find absolutely nothing that seems to relate to the stolen plans.”

“Which denotes very plainly to me, Chick, that Margate has not yet begun negotiations to dispose of them, neither with the original thieves, nor with any government official,” said Nick.

“That’s reasonable, of course.”

“Naturally, too, Garland is the man with whom he would most likely have communicated,” Nick added. “He has not done so, which further convinces me that I am right. Margate and his confederates are waiting for some move or publication by the government, and to see where they can get in their work to the best advantage.”

“It does look so, Nick, I’ll admit,” Chick allowed.

“We must get them, therefore, before they can accomplish anything more serious.”

“But how?”

“I have opened the way,” said Nick. “Carney will be liberated this morning. If my theory is correct, he will hasten to rejoin Margate and the other scamp who assaulted Dillon.”

“Gee! that looks like a copper-riveted cinch,” said Patsy. “Carney can be shadowed and the others located.”

“That is precisely what I want you to do, Patsy,” Nick replied. “Go to the courthouse in disguise and pick him up when he leaves. Keep an eye on him till you have found the others, and then report to me as quickly as possible.”

“Trust me for that, chief,” said Patsy, hastening to make ready.

“In the meantime, Chick, you begin an espionage on the Esterveldt place,” Nick directed. “I suspect that Margate knows of Dillon’s intimacy with them, and if he knows the occasion of it, he may attempt to covertly communicate with them. The Baron Esterveldt undoubtedly is the big finger in the service of the foreign power guilty of this conspiracy. He is the one who is providing the money, a fact that Margate may have discovered.”

“I agree with you,” said Chick. “That would be the natural quarter for the rascal to turn. I’ll have an eye on the place within half an hour.”

“Very good.”

“What are your own plans?”

“I’m going after Captain Casper Dillon,” said Nick, with ominous intonation. “I have opened the way to that, also. I propose to clinch my suspicions without further delay. I want that miscreant traitor at the outset, and I’m going to get him.”

“That’s the stuff, chief,” cried Patsy. “He ought to be nailed right off the reel.”

“He’ll be nailed, Patsy, all right,” Nick grimly answered.

There was the usual gathering of spectators in the municipal court that morning. Some persons have a morbid interest in watching the wheels of justice revolve, in viewing culprits vainly squirming to slip through the meshes of the legal net, and to witness their condemnation to righteous punishment.

Among them that morning was a sinister-looking fellow in a baggy brown suit and woolen shirt, who would really have looked more in place in the prisoner’s dock than in one of the chairs allotted to spectators.

He had no interest in the proceedings, nevertheless, until the case of Thomas Carney was called and that worthy put in an appearance--a stocky, dark man of thirty, wearing a scowl evincing his resentment of his long detention in custody.

Much to his surprise, no doubt, as well as that of his lawyer, the court was favorably impressed with the argument of his attorney, and decided there were no grounds for longer holding the prisoner, and Mr. Thomas Carney was forthwith discharged.

Patsy Garvan, the spectator in baggy brown, then had disappeared from the courtroom. He was watching from across the street the door from which Carney would emerge, and he had not long to wait.

Carney came out with his lawyer, with whom he shook hands before they parted. He then hurried through Sixth Street, bringing up in a few minutes near Center Market, where he was met by a seedy fellow who emerged from the market, and who evidently said a few words to him while passing.

Patsy was not near enough to hear him, however, though he detected the fact and came to a quick conclusion.

“That fellow was waiting for him and gave him instructions from some one,” he said to himself. “It has started him in a new direction. It’s money to marbles that he was directed where to meet Margate.”

Patsy was right to that extent.

Carney appeared, however, to have no thought that he might be followed, which made it perfectly easy for Patsy to shadow him.

Pausing only once in a barroom, where he gulped a stiff drink of whisky, Carney shaped a course that took him into one of the lowest parts of the city, where he brought up at an inferior wooden house adjoining a narrow court making in next to the bare back wall of a brewery.

Sauntering by the court, into which Carney had quickly disappeared, Patsy saw that a diverging alley led to the back of the house, beyond which was a motley collection of old buildings, at none of the windows of which he could discover any person.

“I’ll take a chance in the alley,” he said to himself, noting that the narrow court was deserted. “The rascal evidently has entered the back door of the house. I must find out for what, or who’s there, at least. It may be where the rascal lives.”

Turning back, having come to that decision, Patsy stole into the court, crouching below the side windows of the house, the curtains of which were lowered. Then hugging the board fence of a small rear yard, he crept to the entrance of the alley, into which he cautiously peered.

Despite his caution, however, this move was a fatal one. His head no sooner protruded beyond the corner of the fence, than an uplifted bludgeon fell as quick as a flash, catching him squarely on the skull and sending him to the ground as if felled with an ax.

Three men, including Carney, quickly leaped upon him, one instantly winding a thick scarf around his head; and before Patsy had even begun to recover from the stunning blow, he was caught up bodily and carried through the back door of the house, which one of the ruffians hurriedly closed and locked.

A dash of cold water brought Patsy to himself, so completely to himself, in fact, that he realized what had occurred before he betrayed that he was reviving; and instantly resolved to hide that fact until he could learn, or stealthily draw his revolver and hold up his captors.

The last ambitious move was nipped in the bud by a sharp command from one of them--a wiry, muscular fellow in the twenties, whose right hand had struck Patsy to the ground.

“Cut out that water, Tom,” he cried, addressing Carney, who had dashed the water upon Patsy after they had dropped him on the kitchen floor. “This isn’t a bathhouse. Turn him over first and be sure we are right. See whether he carries a gun and bracelets. Those would clinch it.”

“I know I’m right,” said another, with a voice so cold and keen that it fairly cut into Patsy’s ears. “You’ll find both gun and bracelets. Put the irons on him, hands behind him, and make sure they are tightly locked. There will be time enough to revive him.”

“That’s no pipe dream, Andy,” said the other, while he hastened to assist Carney.

They had turned Patsy face downward while speaking, both crouching over him, and he knew that any attempt to resist them would result only in additional rough usage and do no earthly good. The mention of Margate’s name, however, had told him into whose hands he had fallen, and their remarks indicated plainly enough that he had walked into a trap.

“I thought you had killed him, Larry, mebbe,” growled Carney. “I wanted to make sure you hadn’t. I’m not running my neck into a rope.”

“Rope be hanged!” snapped the other, subsequently learned to be one Laurence Trent, and by far the worst crook of the two. “Ah, I thought so. Here they are, Andy.”

Patsy felt his two revolvers jerked from his pockets, and then the chill of the handcuffs around his wrists, locked with a pressure that nearly stopped the circulation. He still pretended to be unconscious, nevertheless, bent upon learning more and biding his time for a counter-move.

“I knew you would find them,” said Margate. “I’ve known from the first, Larry, that I must be right.”

“These prove it, Andy.”

“As for your running your neck into a rope, Carney, you’re no good at running,” said Margate, coldly addressing the other. “Otherwise, you would have worked your legs fast enough to keep out of limbo. You’ve come near making a mess of a good thing.”

“I’m sorry, Andy, on my word,” replied Carney. “But I slipped in starting, and that put me behind. I hope I have not queered it.”

“I never let a job of mine be queered,” Margate said, with sinister assurance. “I can see my way clear, all right, but we must get in our work more quickly than if these infernal sleuths had not turned up.”

“Who d’ye think is on the case?” growled Trent, who had been making Patsy doubly secure with a cord around his elbows.

“I dunno,” said Carney, turning to him. “Who?”

“Nick Carter.”

“The devil he is!” Carney gasped, staring.

“Leastwise, Andy saw him in Hardy’s office yesterday afternoon, and he reckoned----”

“Never mind what I reckoned, Larry, just now,” Margate interrupted. “Sit this whelp against the wall and chuck some more water on him. We must find out just what Carter knows, or suspects, and what he has done. He knew me, all right, or this blooming idiot would not be here. We’ll find out what more he can tell us.”

“You’ll get fat and juicy on that,” thought Patsy, intensely disgusted with the unfortunate turn of affairs. “There’ll be nothing in denying my identity, for that cold-blooded guy is right. But if he gets anything more out of me, he’ll do it with a corkscrew.”

Another splash of cold water broke Patsy’s train of thought, indulged in while the two lesser rascals sat him against one of the kitchen walls. He did not want it repeated. He opened his eyes, therefore, and said curtly, gazing from one to the other:

“Cut that! I’m not on a water diet. What do you ginks take me for?”

“Great guns! He’s a long ways from dead,” growled Carney.

Larry Trent laughed loudly.

But Margate waved both of them aside, taking a chair directly opposite the detective and coldly eyeing him.

“We know for what we have taken you,” he said icily. “We know who you are, too.”

“Well, you’ve got nothing on me, Mr. Margate, as far as that goes,” Patsy coolly retorted.

“Ah, you admit that you know me, then!”

“That’s what. You are pretty well known and widely mugged in two countries.”

“I see,” Margate drawled, with a sneer. “I was right. Carter did recognize me. He has told you about me.”

“I didn’t need much telling,” Patsy said dryly, in no mood to hide his feelings.

“Nor did I,” retorted Margate. “I suspected the trick he might attempt to turn, and you found us ready for you.”

“Yes, I’m wise to that, now, without being told.”

“And you’re going put me wise to something.”

“Am I?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, I guess I could put you wise to some few things you don’t know,” Patsy dryly allowed.

“That’s just what I want,” said Margate, with a threatening nod. “What case is Carter on in Washington?”

“Give it up,” said Patsy. “You’ll have to ask him.”

“Does that mean that you’ll not inform me?”

“Take it any old way you like.”

“I’ll find a way to make you.”

“You bet we will,” snarled Trent, seizing a poker and starting to thrust it into the stove. “A red-hot iron will open your mouth. That’s what you’ll get, too, unless----”

“Keep quiet, Larry,” interrupted Margate, thrusting him aside. “There’ll be time enough for that. I’ll get the truth from him while you are gone.”

“Gone where?”

“We must not let Carter head off our game, now that we’re dead sure that he is on to Carney and the trick we served Dillon,” Margate forcibly explained. “He may be wise to even more than that, and we must warn Dillon and Esterveldt of their danger. We must put them on their guard against Carter, at least, until we can land them and get the blunt for the picture book. Better a small loaf than no loaf at all, now that Carter is butting into this game.”

“But he----”

“There’s nothing else to it, Larry, and we must lose no time,” Margate said, interrupting. “Come out here, both of you, and take my instructions. We shall be left on the rocks, stranded like three old hulks, if Carter gets in his work ahead of us. Come into the entry and take my instructions.”

There was a mingling of quiet energy and threatening determination in this man that told plainly enough that he would brook no opposition, nor did either of his confederates offer any. They followed him into the dim basement entry, where for several minutes the three knaves held a whispered discussion.

Patsy saw plainly that Margate was much the most capable and dangerous of the three. No less keen a knave would have suspected Nick’s ruse and laid such a trap for him, or an assistant. Patsy writhed inwardly under the turn of affairs, but was forced to admit that he was powerless for the moment, at least.

Listening intently, he could hear only the faint, earnest whispers of the men in the entry. These were presently followed by the hurried steps of Trent and Carney, when both ran up the stairs and quickly left the house.

Margate returned to the kitchen and resumed his seat. He drew a revolver and shifted it to the side pocket of his fashionable sack coat. He eyed Patsy in silence for several moments, with his thin lips curled with a sneer, and he then said deliberately, with ominous quietude:

“Now, young man, I’ll see whether you’ll become communicative. We’ll talk this over without interruptions.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Patsy coolly asserted. “I’m right here to do my share of the talking--if the subject suits me.”