Chapter III: A Blind Chase

When Patsy took the trail of the young man who had followed Nick to the doors of the bank, the only purpose of it was to find out who he was and with whom he had connection.

In taking up the trail Patsy was wary. His first effort was to determine whether the young man feared shadowing, and, if he did, whether he believed himself to be shadowed.

For the first ten minutes there were no indications of any kind on the part of the young man.

He took up a bee line for Broadway, and, turning into that thoroughfare, walked to the south with a rapid gait and a businesslike manner, turning neither to the right nor the left, nor giving any heed to persons behind him.

Thus they went, the followed and the follower, down Broadway, when, the building of the New York Life being reached, the young man suddenly turned into it with quickened pace.

Patsy broke into a sharp run. He quickly appreciated the danger he was in of losing his man. It seemed to him that these great big buildings, with their numerous elevators, many stairs and entrances and exits, were especially contrived to favor escaping crooks.

As he dashed through the entrance, he saw his man turning, on a run, into the rotunda, which is circled by elevators.

“The deuce!” cried Patsy. “My one chance is that he can’t get an elevator before I get to him.”

He ran like a deer down the long corridor, to the amazement of those who were passing.

He turned the corner just in time to see the gates of the elevator close, as it shot upward, and in it was the man he had followed.

This was almost too much for Patsy, and he gave an exclamation of chagrin. But he rapidly took in the fact that the elevator that had just gone up was the one that did not stop short of the tenth floor, and that one was to follow, stopping at each.

Into this he plunged, concealing himself from view, but in such a way that he himself could watch.

Passing the ninth floor, he saw the young man eagerly watching the elevator that followed.

Patsy could not get out on the ninth, but he did on the tenth, and hurried down the stairs. Some one was descending the stairs to the eighth floor. Leaning over the balustrades, Patsy saw a man descending rapidly.

This one wore a dark beard and mustache, and his hair was of the same color. The man he had followed had been beardless and his hair was quite light. But there was something in the carriage of the shoulders of the man descending the steps that suggested the one he had followed down Broadway.

Springing to the head of the stairs, Patsy flung himself on the balustrades, sliding down thence to gain time.

The man followed quickened his pace and fairly flew down the steps two at a time. Patsy was gaining on him, for he was more reckless in his pursuit than the man was in his flight—taking more chances.

Thus the chase continued until the floor on which the great offices of the insurance company were reached, when the followed man plunged into them, with Patsy close on his heels.

Then the man stopped, faced about and waited for Patsy to come up. To the lad’s astonishment, he was not in disguise. He looked at Patsy with a sarcastic smile, and asked:

“Are you following me?”

“Yes,” replied Patsy, carefully sizing up his man.

“You could be in better business,” replied the other. “What are you doing it for?”

“You know very well,” replied Patsy.

“Now that you have got up to me, what are you going to do?” he asked.

That was just exactly what Patsy was asking himself. What was he going to do? But he made a bluff, and said:

“I am going to find out who you are, and what your name is.”

“That’s easy,” replied the other. “But what do you want to know for?”

“That’s my business,” replied Patsy.

The fact was, Patsy didn’t really know why he had been ordered to follow the man. He suspected that it was because the man had followed Nick, and that there was a desire to know who he was.

“Of course, that is your business,” replied the other. “Very well, my name is George Vernon; I am one of the secret inspectors of this company. I followed Nick Carter this morning, thinking he touched the case I am on, until I found he did not. Then I sheered off. I take it I am a good deal in the same business you are.”

All the time he was talking this way he had been edging toward a door.

This seemed to be so straight that Patsy could not deny it, though he believed the fellow was lying. He looked around to the clerks for confirmation, but they were all behind high desks and railings, and he could not get to them except by leaving his man.

A high official of the company approached, one Patsy knew well.

Patsy hailed him, and asked him if the man calling himself Vernon was in the employ of the company.

“Well, that’s a hard one for me,” said the official, good-naturedly. “I should be greatly puzzled to identify all of our employees.”

The man said, respectfully:

“I am in the inspectors’ department.”

The official, however, became suddenly serious, and asked:

“But what is it? Anything wrong with him, Patsy?”

The other now turned on the lad with a start, his eyes intently fixed on Patsy, and the lad, as much as he respected the high official, could have kicked him for letting out his name.

But the high official did worse. Saying to the one who called himself Vernon to stand where he was, he seized Patsy by the arm to lead him to a gentleman sitting at a desk within a railing.

The impulse was a kindly one, for the high official wanted to serve Patsy, but it was a mistaken one, since the other, seizing his opportunity, dashed through the door, near which he was standing, into a big office beyond.

Patsy broke from the grasp of the high official and jumped after him. There was a second’s delay as the door swung back on him, but when he had passed through he saw the other running down the long room.

The sight of a man flying frantically through the room, with another plunging along as frantically, followed closely by a high official of the company, excited all the clerks, and they thronged into the narrow way, so impeding Patsy’s pursuit that, by the time he had reached the door at the end of the room through which the other disappeared, his man was nowhere to be seen.

He ran hither and thither toward all the outlets, but quickly recognized the futility of further effort.

He went back to the high official, who had followed him out of the room. Patsy was considerably nettled, but, choking down his anger, said:

“He’s a crook, all right, or he wouldn’t have wanted to get away from me. But now I want to ask you whether there is a George Vernon in the employ of the company.”

“What department does he say he is employed in?” asked the official.

“In the inspector’s department.”

“Come with me,” said the official.

Patsy was led to a room where a man, busily engaged, was seated at a desk. He arose immediately on the approach of the high official, answering promptly the question whether there was a George Vernon in his employ.

“Yes; there is such a person, and he is in the next room at this moment.”

“Call him,” said the official.

A tall, thin, intelligent-looking young man, the very opposite in appearance of the one whom Patsy had followed, reported.

What was apparent was that the man followed had known of this George Vernon, and had seized on his name to throw Patsy off.

When the real George Vernon was told of the occurrence and of the man who had taken his name, he said that on the day previous he had fallen in with a man of the description given in an uptown hotel, who had expressed a wish to take out a policy on his life. The real Vernon had talked with him on that line and given him his name and department.

“Well,” said Patsy, to the high official, “my man got away, but one thing is settled, he’s a crook, and the other thing is that I have him so well sized up that I’ll know him, I don’t care how he is disguised.”

Patsy left the offices of the company, and as he did so, he said to himself:

“My man carries his shoulders as not one man in a thousand does. He has a short step and a knock-kneed gait; he has no beard and a small mole under his chin, on the left side.”

He stopped in the corridor suddenly, slapped his thigh with his hand, stood still a moment, thinking earnestly. Finally he exclaimed aloud:

“Holy smoke! I’ll bet that’s the way of it.”

Seeking a retired spot, in a corner, he made a rapid change in his appearance.

He had entered the building a smartly dressed young fellow. He left it looking like a broken-down man of sixty, limping in gait and with bowed shoulders, racked with a cough.

But he did not leave it until he had stood some time in the entrance holding out his hands and asking for money of every one that entered nor until he had been fairly driven from it by the officer in charge.

Then he stood on the sidewalk, still begging, and continued to do so until the officer drove him away by threatening him with arrest.

All the while he was thus engaged his eyes had been busy, and he saw a man standing on the opposite side of the street, occupying a position that commanded a view of the main entrance.

When driven from the sidewalk in front of the building he crossed the street and took up a position near this man.

A moment was sufficient to satisfy Patsy that he was disguised. Half an hour passed, during which Patsy begged, when he could without being discovered by policemen, and still shadowed the disguised man, who was watching the main entrance.

Finally this man strolled away like one who did so reluctantly. Patsy watched him with a thrill of delight.

He had found his man again.

The man went to a hotel, where he sat down in the writing-room and, taking paper and envelope from his pocket, began to write letters.

Patsy slipped away and made another change in his appearance, and, coming back, set out to write letters himself.

When the other had written two letters, he got up and went out, followed by Patsy.

This time he went to an American District Telegraph office, handing the letters in and paying the fee.

Leaving the office he went directly back to the hotel where he had written his letters, and, calling for the key of room ninety-eight, said to the clerk:

“I am tired and shall lie down for a nap. Call me by two o’clock. Not later.”

He went to his room. Patsy turned over the register and found the name of Harold Stanton, and opposite the number ninety-eight.

“How long has Stanton been staying with you?” asked Patsy.

“Only since last night.”

“What do you know of him?”

“Nothing. He paid for his room for two nights. But he wasn’t in his room last night.”

Patsy went away, saying:

“What next? I’ve run him down to this place, and know he figures as Harold Stanton.”

He went back to the American District Telegraph office and persuaded the man in charge to give him the names of the persons to whom Stanton had written letters.

One was Nick Carter, the other was Alpheus Cary.

Patsy gave a long whistle, and set out to find his chief.