Chapter VIII: Caught in a Corner

Patsy Garvan was hit with an idea, of course, when he started in hot pursuit of the man in gray. He suddenly suspected, having seen him come from the back door of Goulard’s private office, under the circumstances already described, that this grizzly bearded fellow was none other than Gaston Goulard himself.

Patsy realized, moreover, that the investigations he had made after the suspect’s hurried departure, might prevent his overtaking him, and that was the thought uppermost in Patsy’s mind when he plunged down the rear stairway in pursuit of him.

He brought up in a paved court back of the vast building. It made in from a side street, and was used chiefly for the receiving and shipping of merchandise from the store. It adjoined the broad doors of the two great basement rooms devoted to these branches of the vast business.

Several wagons and teamsters then were in the court, but there was no sign of the man Patsy was seeking.

“He surely came this way,” he hurriedly reasoned. “He must have gone to the side street, too, for the other end of the court brings up against a wing of the building. I’ll take that chance.”

Patsy took it vainly, however, darting in that direction. He could not discover his quarry in the side street, in spite of his hurried, far-searching scrutiny. It then became a question as to which direction the man had taken.

“He would have gone through the store, of course, if heading for Sixth Avenue,” Patsy continued to reason. “That would have been the nearest way, and he appeared to be in a hurry. It’s odds, then, that he went the other way, and it’s that way for mine.”

Patsy started off again and walked for nearly a block, gazing sharply in every store, including that of the Acme Novelty Company, but he finally was forced to admit to himself that he had lost his man.

“Gee whiz! it’s tough luck,” he muttered, pausing and then turning back. “I’ll eat my hat, crown and brim, if that wasn’t Goulard himself. Why the dickens didn’t I hook onto that idea on the jump? I then could have trailed him without sweating a hair. There’s nothing for me, now, but to return and tell the chief, when he shows up in the store.”

Slowly retracing his steps, however, Patsy lingered for several moments here and there, still hoping to discover his quarry.

A taxicab was approaching from Sixth Avenue. It stopped suddenly at a store on the same side as Patsy, and some thirty feet from where he then was standing.

A man sprang out, quickly followed by another--and Patsy then felt a thrill shoot up his spine.

“Holy smoke! that’s Chick in disguise, as sure as I’m knee-high to a grasshopper,” he said to himself, while he watched both men hurry into the store.

“I know that disguise as well as I know his own face,” Patsy went on mentally. “He was on Bart Bailey’s track, and it now is a hundred to one that he has some job on the rascal. The other must be Bailey himself. Great guns! I’m getting wiser every minute. Now it’s a thousand to one that Goulard went into that store, or why has Bailey gone in there? Gee! the boot may be on the other leg. This may be a job to get the best of Chick. That may be Goulard’s hurried mission from the department store.”

Patsy had reasoned it out correctly, in spite of his meager information of the actual circumstances.

Bart Bailey had, as a matter of fact, sent Goulard a message in response to the code telegram, and had informed him of his designs.

Patsy was not slow in acting upon his suspicion, nevertheless though he took care not to interfere with whatever Chick might have up his sleeve. He sauntered by the store, glancing up at the sign and through the window. He passed just in time to see Nolan turn back after locking the door, and then vanish with Chick down the rear stairway.

“That don’t look good to me,” thought Patsy, brows knitting. “Why did he lock that door? Chick evidently knew it and stood for it. He must know what he’s doing, therefore, but he may slip a cog in some way. I’ll not butt in, but I’ll be hanged if I don’t do a bit of nosing around on my own hook.”

Patsy sauntered by the store again, and now saw plainly that it was unoccupied. He then moved on and crossed the street to survey the two upper floors.

“Some one lives up there,” he muttered. “It may be the gink I saw in the store, or some one else employed there. I’ll not risk asking any questions. Gee! I might get next in that way.”

Patsy was hit with another idea. He had discovered an open alley leading to the rear of the building. He also had discovered a stonemason at work in the alley, engaged in pointing up portions of the brick wall of the next building. He was at work with a bucket of mortar and a trowel.

Patsy made a short detour and presently paused at the entrance to the alley.

“Hist!” he called quietly.

The mason turned quickly, a ruddy young Irishman, and Patsy signed for him to come out and follow him. They met a few rods away a moment later, out of view from the windows above the suspected store.

“What d’ye want?” questioned the Irishman curiously.

“Slip into the saloon here and I’ll tell you,” said Patsy. “I’ll also buy you a drink, or whatever you fancy.”

“Faith, and I can stand that, all right,” grinned the Irishman.

Patsy led the way to a rear room of the saloon, where he gave a waiter an order, and he then proceeded to explain his project to his companion, revealing his identity and his relations with Nick Carter.

“I wish to size up that building next to the one on which you are working, Grady,” he said, having learned the other’s name. “I must do so without being suspected. I can get by, all right, if you’ll lend me your duck blouse, overalls, and hat, and remain here under cover while I get in my work.”

Grady grinned.

“In other words, Mr. Garvan, you want to take my place,” said he.

“Exactly. I’ll slip you a five-dollar note for it, Grady, and----”

“You kape the five bucks in your pocket, Mr. Garvan,” Grady warmly interrupted. “Faith, who wouldn’t do that much for Nick Carter! If you get into these togs as quick as I come out of them, you can be at work with me trowel in the shake of a lamb’s tail. I’ll hide here with my trap closed, be it long or short that you’re gone. That goes, too, by these five fingers across.”

“You’re all right, Grady, from your toes up,” replied Patsy gratefully. “Take it from me, all the same, you’ll get yours for this.”

Patsy sauntered out of the saloon in about five minutes. Only a close observer would have detected his subterfuge. One who had seen Grady at work would merely have supposed that another mason had taken his place.

Patsy devoted very little time, of course, to pointing up the brick wall. He began, instead, while pretending to be at work, a furtive inspection of the walls adjoining the basement to which he had seen Chick and Nolan descend. He could find, however, no window lighting the underground room.

“Gee! that’s mighty strange,” he said to himself. “Have they been stoned up for some reason? I’ll be hanged if I don’t think this crib figures in some way in the department-store robberies. I reckon I’ll go a step farther.”

Patsy already had found that a rear door and stairway led up to the dwelling over the store of the Acme Novelty Company. He could observe no one at any of the windows, however, and he felt quite sure that he could stealthily enter the place.

“If seen by any one, I can say I came in to ask for some water for my mortar,” he said to himself. “I’ll take the chance.”

Mounting the two low steps outside, Patsy found that the door was locked, also that the key had been removed.

“That simplifies it,” he muttered. “I can pick this lock like breaking sticks.”

He accomplished it with a picklock in half a minute. Quietly opening the door a few inches, he gazed into a narrow hall and at a bare stairway leading upward. A door in the right wall some ten feet away also met his gaze. He paused briefly and listened.

Not a sound came from within. The hall was as silent as if the building was deserted.

Patsy stepped in and closed the door, leaving it unlocked, lest he might have occasion to retreat hurriedly.

The closing of the door left the hall and stairway in darkness--barring a single thread of artificial light that now caught his eye.

It was a vertical thread in the side wall, some two feet from where he was standing.

“Electric light,” thought Patsy, listening again. “The store is not lighted. Nor does the store run back as far as this. The door leading into the store from this hall is farther in. There must be a lighted room back here, all the same, or this chink--by gracious, it’s a panel door.”

Thrusting his nails into the crevice through which the light had shone, Patsy had felt a section of the wall slip noiselessly to one side, revealing a secret panel so skillfully constructed as to defy ordinary inspection.

It revealed, moreover, something of far greater significance.

A flight of steps led down to a brightly lighted basement in the extreme rear of the building. It was walled in like a tomb, however, with no sign of a window.

On the cement floor stood a large horizontal engine of peculiar construction, so peculiar that Patsy could not imagine for what it was used, or why it was there.

Near by on a rack was a metal cylinder about two feet long and ten inches in diameter. Each end had a movable metal cover. Around both ends, moreover, was a flange of thick felt.

On a narrow table near the farther wall, one of them spread open evidently for inspection, and so placed that its folds hung nearly to the floor, lay two costly Persian shawls.

The instant Patsy’s gaze fell upon them, the truth began to dawn upon him.

“Great guns!” he exclaimed mentally. “The two shawls mentioned by Goulard. He did not bring them here, however. There is a connection between this cellar and the department store. That’s a dead open-and-shut cinch, and it’s operated in some way with this engine. By gracious, I’ll have a closer look, if it takes a leg!”

Patsy had seen, of course, that this subterranean chamber then was deserted. Placing the panel exactly as he had found it, Patsy crept down the steps and gazed around.

“I have it,” he muttered. “This interior wall has been built across the original basement so as to form this chamber, and at the same time prevent detection by persons in the other part of the basement, who would naturally suppose it extended back no farther than this inner wall. It must be to the other part of the basement that Chick descended. He still must be there, too, unless----”

That there was no alternative, that his suspicions from the outset had been correct, that he had trapped himself also, and was up against a sudden, desperate situation--all flashed over Patsy on the instant, when his train of thought was broken by sounds that sent a momentary chill down his spine.

The quick opening of a door, the heavy tread of men’s feet, mingled with a harsh, commanding voice, which he instantly recognized to be that of Gaston Goulard--these were the sounds that suddenly fell upon Patsy’s ears.

“Open that panel door, Bolton, and give us more light,” Goulard was crying. “Lug him up here, Nelson, and be quick about it. Lend him a hand, Bart. We’ll hide the infernal dick in the engine room till we can dispose of him. Work lively. I must phone to Lombard and make sure that all is well before I return.”

“Great Scott!” thought Patsy, before half of the foregoing was said. “I’m in wrong, all right, against odds which--hang it! here’s my best chance.”

Patsy had caught sight of the Persian shawl hanging over the side of the table. As quick as a flash, dropping to the floor, he rolled under the table and back of the folds of the shawl, which for a moment, at least, served to shelter him like a curtain.

He scarce had accomplished this and checked the slight disturbance of the hanging shawl, when the panel flew open, and Nolan and Bart Bailey roughly rolled Chick Carter, then bound hand and foot, down the flight of steps to the engine-room floor.

“Lie there, blast you, until we’re ready to hand you something more,” Bailey cried, with a snarl. “Meddle with our business, will you? We’ll send you to the devil for it.”

“Leave him there,” snapped Goulard sharply. “Leave him there and close the door. Wait here, you three, while I phone to Lombard. There’s no telling what these Carters may have done, or will do. I’ll find out in a couple of minutes.”

Patsy heard his strident voice even after the panel door was closed. He also heard him rush through the hall, evidently to a telephone in the rear part of the store.

Patsy did not wait to hear more. He whipped out his knife and rolled from under the table, giving Chick, who was only a bit bruised by his fall down the steps, the surprise of his life.

“Eureka! You here, Patsy?” said he quietly.

“Bet you!” muttered Patsy, quickly cutting Chick’s bands. “I’m a Charley on the spot, for fair.”

“Is there a way out?”

“Only up these steps.”

“Thunder!”

“Tight box, old top, eh?” declared Patsy, undaunted. “But we have been in just as tight before.”

“Yes, and then some,” Chick nodded, springing up. “Have you got two guns?”

“Sure!”

“Let me have one. The rats have taken mine.”

“No sooner said than done,” grinned Patsy, handing Chick one of his revolvers and retaining the other. “What next? Shall we make a break at once and nail them in their own trenches, or----”

“Wait!” Chick interrupted. “Find the switch key that cuts off these lights. The rascals will fight back, but they could not get a line on us in the dark. We can get them at that advantage.”

“I’m wise,” said Patsy, vainly searching for the electric switch key.

“Be quick,” whispered Chick, crouching at the foot of the steps. “If--ah, there’s something doing. Something is wrong.”

A roar from Gaston Goulard had reached his ears, a fierce oath, followed by:

“There’s the deuce to pay! I can’t get Lombard on the phone. He has been arrested. There’s a chance, by thunder, that guns will show up here at any moment. Gag that infernal dick in the engine room, then put out the light. Fix----”

“Perdition! We’re already fixed!”

Bart Bailey had thrown open the panel door and suddenly discovered the two detectives.

“Hands up!” Chick shouted, starting up the steps. “Up with them, or----”

“Hands up be hanged!”

Bart Bailey leaped aside, seeking the shelter of the wall, then whipped out a revolver and fired through the doorway.

The bullet whizzed a foot over Chick’s head.

“Out with the lights, Patsy!” he shouted. “Smash the bulbs!”

Patsy’s revolver swung upward like a flash.

There was a crash of breaking glass--and the subterranean chamber was in darkness.