Chapter VIII: Captain Dillon’s Visitor

It was about half past ten when Patsy Garvan heard Carney and Larry Trent hurry out of the house in which he found himself effectively trapped.

Less than half an hour later a rather roughly clad man with bearded face and rounded shoulders, a face and figure denoting that he was well along in years, passed the Carnegie Library and crossed Vernon Square, and a few minutes later fell to sizing up an apartment house in a neighboring street.

It was one of those attractive places of the kind with which Washington abounded, a double rise of flats entered from a neatly trimmed front yard, with well-shaded grounds on either side of the ivy-grown brick edifice.

The ground-floor flat on one side was occupied by a solitary and exclusive tenant, the ex-army officer, Captain Casper Dillon. He kept no servants and had very few visitors. He was lounging in his library, clad in a smoking jacket and absorbed in the morning newspapers, when his bell rang.

He glanced through the partly open French window, which overlooked the side grounds and a walk leading around to the rear door. He could not see who was in the front vestibule.

He arose, pausing for a moment, and then took a revolver from the table drawer and slipped it into his hip pocket.

Striding through the hall, he opened the front door and gazed a bit sharply at his caller--the bearded man with rounded shoulders.

“Well, sir?” he said shortly.

“I’m sent here to see Captain Dillon, sir,” said the visitor, with subdued and husky voice. “Is he at home this morning?”

“He is seldom at home to strangers,” Captain Dillon replied, with sharper scrutiny. “What is your business?”

“I’m sent to tell only him, sir, no one else,” was the reply. “Here is my card, sir--Michael Rohan, sir. If he is at home, would you say this much to him: It’s about what happened a few nights back. That’s all I can say, sir.”

Captain Dillon’s brows knit closer, but his searching scrutiny had proved ineffective. His visitor’s respectful air, his manifest humility, his evident aim to follow instructions that had been given him--these so plainly denoted that he was acting for others and had no aggressive intentions, that Captain Dillon was completely deceived.

“You may come in, my man,” he said curtly, stepping back to admit him and then closing the door. “Come into the library. I will hear what you have to say.”

Rohan followed him, removing his cap and gingerly taking a chair to which the ex-army officer pointed, one near a cloth-topped library table in the middle of the room. He laid his cap on it, and appeared to feel out of his element amid such superior surroundings.

Captain Dillon noticed it, and his frown relaxed. He sat down at the opposite side of the table, gazing across it and saying:

“Your name is Rohan, is it?”

“Yes, sir. Michael Rohan, sir,” said he huskily.

“Who sent you here?”

“I’m to see Captain Dillon, sir; no one else. If----”

“I am Captain Dillon.”

“Oh, is that so, sir?” Rohan asked, gazing. “I ought to have known it, mebbe. Who else is here, sir?”

“Nobody,” Captain Dillon said curtly. “I live alone in this flat. Come to the point, my man. What do you want of me?”

“I’m not after wanting anything, sir,” replied Rohan, drawing nearer the table. “It’s them that sent me.”

“Who are they? Why did they send you?”

“I’m not to mention any names, sir. I’m sent here only to tell you what they want--and to find out what you are willing to give up for it.”

Captain Dillon turned wary. He was not a man to be easily led into a trap. He frowned again, saying a bit sternly:

“You must be more explicit, Mr. Rohan. I’m not good at guessing riddles. I don’t know at what you’re driving.”

“You don’t, eh?” Rohan’s eyes took on a curious leer.

“I certainly do not,” Dillon insisted.

“You was beat up a few nights back, wasn’t you?”

“Yes, by two cowardly thugs.”

“Three, sir, was the number,” said Rohan. “But that don’t matter. You lost something, didn’t you?”

“A small quantity of blood--nothing more.”

Rohan spread his arms on the table and lurched a little nearer.

“Tell that to the marines, sir,” said he, with a sinister nod. “You know what I mean, sir, and I know you know it. You’d better meet me halfway, too, Captain Dillon, or I might as well take myself out the way I came in. You’ve nothing to fear from me, sir, and I don’t fear you. I wasn’t one of the three, and I can prove it--but I came from them. If there is nothing doing, sir, I’ll go back and tell them so.”

Michael Rohan appeared about to do so, in fact, but Dillon checked him with a gesture.

“Stop a moment,” said he. “What do your rascally friends want?”

“Money,” said Rohan shortly.

“For what?”

“For what you lost that night.”

“How much money?”

“All that you’ll give. That’s what I’m to find out.”

“But I don’t know you, Rohan, from a side of leather,” Captain Dillon said, with a growl. “What evidence have I that you were sent by those three scoundrels? I’m not buying a cat in a bag, nor dealing with any known agent. You may, for all I know, be a detective in disguise.”

Rohan shrugged his rounded shoulders and grinned derisively.

“There’s nothing in that, sir,” said he. “I can give you proof enough.”

Captain Dillon’s squinted eyes took on a gleam of eagerness.

“What proof?” he demanded.

“You’re alone here, you say?” Rohan glanced around again toward the hall and bedrooms.

“Yes, on my word,” Dillon earnestly declared.

“Got a gun on you? Stand up, sir, and lift your jacket.”

“I have one,” Dillon admitted.

“Lock it in a drawer,” said Rohan. “Mind you, sir, I’m not to be held up, and I’m not to hold any one up. I only want a square deal.”

Dillon placed the revolver in a drawer, turning the key and tossing it upon the table. That he anticipated what the proof was to be, despite his pretended ignorance, was betrayed by the eager light in his narrow eyes.

“Now, Mr. Rohan, come to the point,” said he, settling back in his chair. “Where are your credentials? What proof have you?”

“Proof enough, sir,” said Rohan. “The thing you lost.”

“Have you brought it here?”

“I have, sir.”

“Let me see it.”

Rohan arose and thrust his hands up under the back of his coat. The hump between his shoulders disappeared. He drew out a black leather portfolio and placed it on the table.

“There ’tis, sir,” said he; then added quickly: “But don’t get gay. I’m to take it back when I go, and I’m going to do it. I’ve got a gun, sir, and----”

“Enough of that,” Dillon interrupted, eyes glowing. “You’ll need no gun, Rohan, if that portfolio contains what I hope. I will pay any price for them that you rascals can reasonably ask. But I must see them--must be convinced.”

Rohan snapped the two buckles that secured the folded flap of the portfolio.

He thrust in his hand and drew out, not blank papers, which the dummy portfolio had contained--but a quantity of genuine government plans.

“Have a look, sir,” he said indifferently. “It’s up to you.”

An irrepressible cry of exultation broke from Dillon. He lurched forward to the table, quivering with eagerness and excitement, and with both hands outstretched to seize the plans and examine them.

Rohan’s hands fell at the same moment. As quick as a flash, in the hundredth part of a second, he snapped handcuffs on the wrists of the recreant army officer. Then he arose, sweeping off his disguise and saying sternly:

“Let the plans lie there, Captain Dillon.”

“Oh, my God!” Dillon fell back with a terrible cry. “Nick Carter!”

“Yes. Let them lie. I had Mr. Garland get them for me from his department this morning. They are not the plans you stole and lost, but they have served my purpose. You are under arrest, Captain Dillon, as a traitor to your country and a conspirator with foreign spies.”

Captain Dillon had collapsed as if his last ounce of strength had left him--his last drop of blood, in fact, for he looked like a corpse in the great armchair into which he had fallen. He did not speak, could not have spoken; but an interruption, a most unexpected one, came from another.

The stern words scarce had left the lips of the detective, when, through the partly open French window, entering with the swift stealthy and sinuous movements of a leopard, Irma Valaska darted into the room.

Her face was ghastly, her lips gray and drawn, her eyes ablaze as if all that was devilish in her nature was concentrated in their fiery depths.

Nick Carter did not see her until, hearing her fierce, sibilant voice, he swung round and found himself gazing into the deadly muzzle of a leveled revolver.

“You’re wrong! He’s not under arrest!” Irma Valaska cried, with terrible intensity. “Throw up your hands, Nick Carter. Up with them--or there’ll be a corpse where you are standing.”

Nick did not pause for an instant. No sane man looking into her drawn, determined face, would have ignored the murderous light in the woman’s eyes.

Nick fell back a step and threw up his hands.

Irma Valaska came nearer to him. Plainly enough, she feared him no more than a wild cat fears a rabbit.

“Don’t drop them!” she cried, between her teeth. “I’ll fire if you lower them an inch. You devil of a Carter! You would foil my designs, eh? Oh, I know you--I know you! I know all. You move foot or finger, and I will kill you.”

“You look quite capable of it,” said Nick calmly.

“I am!” she cried. “I would rather than not. But there will be time for that--time for that! Move quickly, Casper, while I keep him covered. Get your revolver. Cover him while I get his weapons and keys. I’ll have those things off your wrists. The baron is coming. He will aid us. We shall fool this devil Carter, and spit in his face. Be quick, Casper, be quick!”

There was no need whatever for so vehement a bidding. Dillon had seized upon life anew the instant he saw her and the complete change in the situation. He caught up the key from his table and opened the drawer in which he had placed his revolver. He had it in his hand and was on his feet, white and vengeful, before Irma Valaska had ceased speaking.

In view of the several irons he had in the fire, and the value he placed on a whole skin, Nick Carter did not think it worth while to invite so ready a bullet by attempting any absurdly desperate move.

Smiling indifferently, he permitted Irma Valaska to hold the ribbons for a time.