Chapter XXI: The Fugitives Get a Shock

The low cabin of the canal boat _Mary Jane_ was aft. Nearly an hour and a half after leaving the dock, Grantley and Siebold were sitting just forward of the cabin, on a couple of coils of rope. Their heads were thus below the level of the low roof.

They were conversing in low, guarded tones in order not to be overheard by the captain and hands.

“I’ll confess now,” the younger of the two was saying, “that I never expected to get away from those cursed detectives so easily. It seems almost too good to be true.”

“Pooh!” sneered Grantley. “Like almost everybody else, including those who ought to know better, you have let yourself believe that Carter and his crowd come somewhere near living up to their newspaper reputations. That’s plain nonsense. They don’t. They’re greatly overrated. The detectives of fiction and those of fact are two very different propositions. I’ll admit that Nick Carter is a great deal cleverer than the police, but that isn’t saying much. He’s unusually lucky, too, and that accounts for most of his success, such as it has been. But I haven’t been afraid of him for a moment. Neither he nor anybody else could follow the trail we took, and nobody will think of looking for us on a canal boat. The idea that we would deliberately choose such an infernally slow means of transit will never occur to our enemies, confound them! We’re as safe right now as if we were five thousand miles from New York. And we certainly did a good job. I almost wish I’d left Baldwin with enough mind to realize what had happened to him. I was a little too thorough. When they try the X rays on him, as they undoubtedly will, they will find his cranium absolutely empty. It will be a vast surprise to Vanderpool and the rest of the tribe of medical nincompoops. They’ll stand around in open-mouthed amazement, wondering how he can remain alive after such an operation. I set out to show them something, and I have done it, but I’m sorry now that I didn’t make a little more artistic job of it. I could have removed just enough of his brain to make him a mental wreck, and yet left enough to cause him the greatest anguish of mind over his condition. As it is now, he is nothing but an empty hulk, without intelligence enough to feed or dress himself. He’s deprived of everything but physical sensations, and most of those are missing or robbed of their greatest intensity.”

“I see what you mean, but I wouldn’t worry about that,” returned Siebold. “Your revenge is a thousand times better than killing would have been, and even if you haven’t left him with the power to think, you’ve given the others enough to think about. I’d have given a good deal to see Carter’s face when he opened that envelope and found the pieces of Baldwin’s check. I’ll wager that stumped him. He’ll puzzle over that until he’s black in the face, and never guess your motive for turning down all that money. Even if he knew about Felix Simmons he wouldn’t see through the rest--and he’ll never know about Simmons. It’s fortunate that Simmons----”

The speaker paused abruptly, and he and Grantley looked at each other with a start of apprehension.

They had overheard one of the men on the barge calling to another as he pointed beyond the stern of the unwieldy craft, down the river.

“Look at that police boat footing it up this way, Tim!” were the words that had come to their ears. “Wonder what the cops are up to now?”

In a moment the attitudes of the two fugitives relaxed, and they smiled rather sheepishly. Guilty consciences are not agreeable traveling companions, but their self-confidence and contempt for their enemies reasserted themselves at once.

“This won’t do,” muttered Grantley. “We must get our confounded nerves under better control than that. There’s nobody after us here, and we know it. They’re all running around in circles back there, and we’ll have to stop shying at the mention of a policeman. Let’s have a look at the blamed boat, and then forget it when we’ve shown a little natural curiosity.”

Before they could rise, though, another of the boatmen gave an exclamation which halted the two criminals and left them tense and motionless.

“By George, they’ve done changed their course, an’ are headin’ right this way!” the man ejaculated. “Gosh! I ain’t cracked no safes, I’ll swear! How about you guys?”

The jocular query was addressed to the speaker’s fellows, but that did not give much comfort to the two skulkers in the shadow of the cabin. They decided to remain where they were until they saw which way the cat was going to jump.

Meanwhile, however, Grantley thought it best to pull the wool over the boatmen’s eyes.

“What’s that I hear about a police boat?” he asked lazily. “Tell us when it comes abreast. We’re too darned comfortable here to get up for anything short of a battleship.”

The man made some laughing answer, and Grantley and Siebold managed to keep up a semblance of careless conversation to mask their anxiety.

They had had the best of reasons for believing that effective pursuit was out of the question, but at the approach of the police their guilty fears had instinctively flamed up.

Those who had been watching the boat approach had little doubt now that its business was with the little flotilla of barges, and their mystified comments caused the fugitives’ hearts to sink like lead.

It seemed incredible that their carefully concealed get-away had come to naught so soon. Surely the police boat was not after them. Perhaps one of the boatmen on the _Mary Jane_, or another of the canal boats, had knocked somebody down in some waterside quarrel. That must be it, and yet----

“Tug, ahoy, there!” an authoritative voice boomed through a megaphone. “Don’t be in a hurry! There are a couple of fellows we want back here.”

The voice was startlingly close, and the sound had hardly died away before the bow of the police boat came into view opposite the criminals’ position.

Their fears were uppermost now, and their terrorized instincts told them that the worst had happened.

With one accord they rose to their feet, whipping out their automatics as they did so.

One penetrating glance was enough for them.

They recognized Nick and Chick, and realized that there was something vaguely familiar about the appearance of a third figure on the police boat’s deck--that of Jack Wise.

Before those about them knew what was happening, they had begun firing.

The tow was a big one, consisting of nine barges in all, lashed three abreast. Grantley and Siebold were on the left-hand barge in the first tier, counting from the front. Therefore, as the police boat had approached on the right, they were obliged to fire across two of the barges.

The approach of the official tug had drawn the attention of the boatmen on all of the barges. Two or three of these curious ones were almost within the line of fire, with their backs turned to the fugitives.

Siebold fired wildly, and one of the bystanders went down, with a groan. The rest scattered or threw themselves flat on the decks.

Grantley, however, in contrast to his nervous assistant, was perfectly cool. The detectives were hardly more than twenty feet away, despite the two intervening canal boats, and the scoundrelly surgeon began pumping away as fast as he could and with the steadiest of hands.

His first shot went just over the detectives’ heads, but the second one would doubtless have caught Nick full in the breast had it not been that the police boat grazed the side of the nearest barge at that moment.

The result was that Nick and his companions were thrown off their balance for the time being, luckily for them. Their efforts to prevent themselves from falling were as effective as if they had been able--and willing--to dodge Grantley’s bullets.

The second of these ripped through Nick’s coat, gouging his side a little.

“Down!” commanded the detective, and, just as the fugitives fired again, the five detectives sank below the level of the police boat’s rail.

All but their heads and weapons, that is. They remained in sight, and their revolvers blazed away in a businesslike volley that woke the echoes of the New Jersey hills.

A naval battle in miniature was taking place off West Sixtieth Street, Manhattan.