Chapter XX: Some Good News

Jack Wise made himself scarce, and yet took up a position which enabled him to keep track of the fugitives’ movements.

He was in no great hurry to notify Nick or the police. He wished to first make sure that there were to be no more doublings and twistings on the part of Grantley and Siebold.

Apparently, they had reached the end of their New York trail, and Jack was forced into a sort of reluctant admiration for their cleverness.

The man who had driven them--with the unfortunate millionaire--from the Bronx to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, knew only the beginning of their wanderings, and even if the driver who had picked them up several blocks from that point could be found, it would only be possible for him to say that he had carried them to the Pennsylvania Station.

The supposition would have been--but for Wise’s timely cut across their trail--that they had taken a train there; and there would have been nothing to disprove that belief.

So far as Grantley and Siebold, in their proper persons, was concerned, the trail had ended there. It was “Henry S. Peckham,” of Boston, and “Arnold J. Taliaferro,” of Philadelphia, two very different-looking individuals, who had taken the taxi at that point and driven to the dock of the New York & Buffalo Transport Company.

The only way in which Jack could have improved on their tactics would have been to buy tickets for some point on the Pennsylvania and actually to pass through the gates toward the proper train, if not to board it.

That would have added to the complications, and it would have been easy enough to mingle with the crowd from some incoming train and so return to the waiting room and the street.

The tracks they had left were confused enough as it was, however.

They dismissed their cab and entered the company’s tiny office, from which they emerged a little later, after which they went on board one of the barges lying alongside the dock.

It was plain to Wise that all arrangements had been made in advance, and that the two had been expected. The captain of the barge greeted them with respect and led them into the tiny cabin.

“Hope they like the accommodations!” murmured Jack, with a grin. “They won’t have time to get fussy over them, though.”

Everything seemed to be in readiness for departure. Towlines were being paid out and made fast, and a powerful tug, with steam up, was in readiness to tow a number of the barges up the river to the entrance to the canal, near Albany, where horse power would replace steam for the long, tedious journey through the canal.

Jack waited until Grantley and Siebold appeared again, without their suit cases, and idly began watching the preparations. He had no reasonable doubt after that that they intended to remain on board, at least during part of the trip.

Reassured as to this, and no longer fearing that an alarm would be premature, Nick’s assistant slipped across the street in search of the nearest telephone. He was perfectly willing that the tug and its covey of barges should depart before help came, for, if desired, they could easily be overtaken on the river long before they had passed the city’s northern boundaries.

The two rascally surgeons had committed themselves now, and they would not leave the canal boat unless they became suspicious, which was extremely unlikely at that stage of the game.

There was no public telephone in the neighborhood, but Wise easily gained permission to use an instrument in a near-by store.

He first called up Nick’s house. Neither the detective nor any of his other assistants was at home, but they had been telephoning back there at frequent intervals in order to keep one another informed of their movements.

Consequently, Joseph, Nick’s highly efficient butler, was in possession of the main facts regarding the crime committed on Mr. Baldwin and the plans for the pursuit of the fugitives.

“Well, as fast as they telephone in tell them I’m accidentally on the job, that I’ve been trailing those fellows all over town, and that I can lay my hands on them at any moment. There’s no hurry, so I won’t notify the police. The chief can do that later, if he wishes. Tell him and the rest of them--except Ida Jones, who won’t be needed--to meet me as soon as convenient at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Tenth Avenue? Got that, Joseph?... All right, then. It’s all over but putting on the nippers.”

He had been careful not to speak any plainer, especially in regard to the fugitives’ whereabouts, for fear some of those who were in the store might tip the wink to Grantley and Siebold, in the hope of earning a reward for the information that they were in danger of arrest.

One who had had less experience in such matters, or had studied the ways of criminals under an inferior master, would almost certainly have chafed under the delay and given way to apprehensions lest the two scoundrels might yet slip through his fingers. But Jack Wise knew when to look for trouble and when to be sure that the wind was in the right quarter.

Forebodings would have been foolish under the circumstances. Grantley and Siebold had made themselves at home on the canal boat, which would require days to reach Albany. The very fact that they had done so proved that nothing had aroused their fears during their zigzag course through the city, and now it was to their interest to do nothing that would whet the curiosity of those with whom they had temporarily thrown their lot.

Therefore, there was no reason to suppose that they would not sit tight so long as nothing disturbed them, and Nick and his assistants could be counted on to see that nothing did--until it was too late for their quarry to escape.

Meanwhile, several of the barges had been lashed together and had started up the river. They were heavily laden, however, and the tug’s pace was almost a crawl.

From the vantage point of a neighboring dock, Jack watched them philosophically.

“By-by, my friends! See you later!”

The words formed themselves in his mind, but instantly the look of anticipated triumph disappeared from his face and one of horror replaced it. He was thinking of the well-nigh unbelievable outrage which had been perpetrated on the trusting financier.

“‘The chair’ is altogether too quick and clean a death for those fiends,” he told himself, “and yet they won’t get even that. They haven’t killed his body, but have only murdered the part of him that’s worth most to him--his mind! Yet all they’ll get, I suppose, is the maximum sentence for performing an irregular operation under the new law. They’ll get that, though, I can tell them! I can never be grateful enough for the chance, or the fate, that threw them in my way just then. I suppose the chief would have nabbed them, sooner or later, but it would have meant a lot of mighty stiff pulling against the current.”

Jack thereupon lounged slowly toward Fourteenth Street and hung about the corner he had named for half an hour or more. At the end of that time Nick put in an appearance in one of his motor cars, and, being familiar with his assistant’s disguise, he picked him out at once.

“What’s this Joseph tells me, Jack?” he demanded eagerly, as he jumped out of the machine. “Do you really know where Grantley and Siebold are?”

“That’s the idea, chief.”

“Where?”

“On the barge _Mary Jane_, bound up the river for Buffalo.”

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I am that you’re the champion detective of the world.”

Nick ignored this.

“How long ago did they leave?” he asked.

“About the time I called up the house. You can’t lose them, chief. They’re probably off Thirty-fourth Street now. You could come abreast of them on foot without breaking any walking records. Going to notify police headquarters?”

“I’ve already done so. I knew that you could be relied on, and that Joseph isn’t in the habit of tangling messages. The police ought to be along any minute now.”

Two plain-clothes men, armed with warrants, arrived shortly afterward, and Chick Carter came up almost simultaneously. Nick had instructed Patsy and Ida Jones to continue the hunt for Hoff and the nurse.

One of the boats of the harbor squad was summoned to the foot of West Fourteenth Street from Pier A, after a brief consultation, and in half an hour more the little party was in full pursuit.