Chapter VII: Chick’s Great Discovery

When Nick had left Chick and Patsy at the hotel, where he had taken off the disguise of Mr. Cary, the two young detectives discussed their own details for the night.

“We’re to keep a watch over Mountain,” said Chick.

“He seems able to watch over himself,” replied Patsy.

“Oh, he’s able enough,” said Chick. “It isn’t that. The chief wants to know the moment he gets the word from the Brown Robin. He believes that the Brown Robin will show up to-night.”

“Then we must be on,” said Patsy. “It’s up to us to decorate the lobby of the Empire with our beauty. Say, Chick, it’s the old story. We’ve swung about the Tenderloin so much lately that too many know us.”

“And we’ll have to look different. Well, Patsy, let’s swing out as swell Willie boys.”

Patsy laughed heartily, pounding the pillar against which he had been leaning.

“A sweet Willie boy you’ll make Chick,” he said, after a while, “with those broad shoulders of yours. No, no, Chick. Do your own act. Swing out as a regular swell.”

Chick looked at his watch, and said:

“It is nearly time to rig, then. But come with me first. I want to look over that Seventeenth Street house again. Though the people in the neighborhood say the folks who were in it for three days have left it, I’ve a notion it’s still in the game.”

The two moved off in the direction of the house in question, and had reached the corner of Twenty-third Street and Lexington Avenue on their way, when a young man in a blue flannel shirt and a coil of wire about his shoulder, stopped Chick and asked:

“Ain’t you Chickering Carter?”

“Yes,” replied Chick, eying the young man keenly.

“Well, say,” said the young man, “it’s up to me to tell you something. Say, I’ve been chewing on it all day, and just as soon as I was cleaned up I was going to hunt up Nick Carter and give it away, if it did fling me out of a job.”

“Can you tell me?” asked Chick.

“That’s what I hollered whoa on you for. You’ll do just as well.”

“Step aside, then,” said Chick.

Chick led the way to a place near the corner, where they could talk unobserved, followed by both Patsy and the young man.

“Now, then, what is it?” asked Chick

“I’ve been dead wrong,” said the young man, “and I’m going to square it, even if you fling me over to the company. It’s this way. I’m lineman for the telephone company. See?

“I know all about Nick Carter, and you, and Patsy and Ida. See? Well, I was working on the line up by Ida’s house this morning, where a break had been reported, and I had to go on to the top of a house right by hers.

“Well, I found a wire had been rung in on it, and I followed it to see that it run over the gutter and to a window on the third floor. See?

“I went down to that room, and there was a young woman, and she was a peach, all smiles. See?

“‘You’ve found it,’ she says, ‘and caught me. Now don’t give me away, ’cause there’s nothing in it. I was only trying to get on to my best feller.’ See?

“Anyhow, she give me the great jolly and I went in up to my neck. I was soft as butter. When she flung up a fiver at me, hanged if I didn’t do what she wanted, and fixed the wire to an old ’phone she had in the room.

“She jollied me into it. See? After I got away from her, I began to think, and the more I thought the more wrong it was to me, and I saw what mush I’d been in the hands of a pretty woman.

“So, after I’d been thinking an hour, I went back to unfix it. Say! Just as I got to her door I heard her say: ‘All right, chief, this is Ida.’ Then I took a big tumble. I listened and heard her say over what the one at the other end had been saying, something about ‘Herman Hartwig’ and ‘Passen.’ She had got on to Nick Carter’s talk and was a crook playing Ida.

“I took a sneak up to the roof, cut the leak wire, and switched the other over so that the crook couldn’t get at it again.

“That’s all there is of it. I’ve squared it with you, and, if you want to, you can report me to the company and get me sacked. I won’t squeal.”

“Well,” cried Chick, “I wouldn’t do that, anyway. And now that you’ve squared yourself this way, I wouldn’t think of it.

“It was the chief she was talking with over the wire, but there wasn’t any harm done, for he dropped right away that it wasn’t Ida on the other end, and gave the other a throw-off. He cut the connections with his own ’phone.

“If you want to square it right with the chief, go to his place to-morrow morning and put the connections on. I’ll see him to-night and square you with him.”

The young man, expressing satisfaction with this arrangement, went off, after shaking hands with both Chick and Patsy.

But he had gotten no farther than the corner when he stopped short, peered forward eagerly, and came back to the young detectives on a run.

“Say,” he cried. “Come. The young woman is going down the av’noo. Sure, it’s her.”

“Who?” asked Patsy.

“The one who worked me on the wires.”

The two followed quickly to the corner, where the man pointed out a woman moving along at a brisk gait down Lexington Avenue.

“Come on, Patsy,” cried Chick.

The young man evidently thought he was in it, too, for he followed after.

The woman, plainly unconscious that she was followed, went on until she reached Twenty-first Street, when she was stopped by Grammery Park.

She turned to the right, or toward the west, and went around the park to Twentieth Street, and so down to Irving place.

Into this short street she turned, continuing on to Seventeenth Street.

“Hide!” cried Chick, just as she reached the corner, springing over the fence into a courtyard.

Patsy obeyed immediately and the lineman caught on quickly enough to prevent himself from being seen.

As Chick had anticipated, the woman had stood still on the corner and looked back.

As no one was to be seen, she was apparently satisfied that she was unobserved, for she turned to the left and went out of sight.

The three came from their hiding places, and, at Chick’s suggestion, Patsy stole up to the corner, peering around it.

He signaled for Chick to come, and dashed across Seventeenth Street.

The woman was pursuing her way toward Third Avenue on the upper side of Seventeenth Street.

“Keep back, out of sight,” said Chick to the lineman.

The young man fell back, and Chick advanced cautiously, taking advantage of every obstruction of which he could make use.

Patsy was pursuing the same tactics on the other side of the street.

When within a few doors of Third Avenue, the woman again stopped and looked back.

This had been anticipated by Chick, too, and he was out of sight when she turned.

Nor was Patsy to be seen. The only one in the vista was a man—the lineman—and his back was turned, as if he were walking toward Irving Place.

Hastily she ran up the steps of the house in front of which she had stopped, and disappeared through the door.

Chick and Patsy both appeared at the same instant. Chick sounded a signal, and Patsy came running to him.

“Is it the house, Chick?” he asked.

“The same one, Patsy,” replied Chick.

“Then it is the Brown Robin.”

“Perhaps. We’ll pipe off the house for a while.”

The lineman came back to them, and learning what they were about to do, concluded to go off, but Chick persuaded him to stay.

While he had every reason to believe that the young fellow was honest, yet he would not take the chance of having him give warning.

The wait was half an hour in length, during which time the three were completely concealed under the areaway of a vacant house.

About the time that Patsy expressed the opinion that the woman was settled for the night, a form was seen to appear on the stoop from within the house they were watching.

“Here she comes!” cried Patsy.

The figure descended the steps.

“It’s a man,” said the lineman, “not a woman.”

The figure turned from the house toward the west, approaching closely to the spot where the three were hidden.

As the man passed them, the light of a street lamp fell upon him.

Patsy caught the arm of Chick in a firm grip, and held it until the figure of the man passed far enough along to be beyond the possibility of hearing.

“It is the one I followed this morning,” he whispered.

“The deuce!” exclaimed Chick. “The one who wrote the letter—who went to sleep in the hotel?”

“Yes; in the disguise he put on after he ran away from the insurance building.”

“Get out and watch him,” said Chick to the lineman.

The young fellow did as he was told, and presently reported that the man was crossing Irving Place and going up Seventeenth Street to the west.

“Patsy,” said Chick, “go and rig yourself for the night’s work. I’ll take up the shadow and will give you the trail.”

Patsy was about to go off, but he waited to hear Chick say to the lineman:

“It isn’t worth your while to follow us longer.”

But at the moment the lineman said:

“The fellow is coming back.”

Again the three went into hiding to see that the young fellow stopped at the corner of Irving Place.

He stood there a moment or two, looking down the street, and passed out of sight.

Patsy stole up to the corner, and lightly leaping into the courtyard of the house on the corner, threw himself on the ground and wriggled to the corner, to see the man standing nearby, leaning against the fence.

Patsy wriggled back, and signaled to Chick that the man was there yet.

Chick gave the return signal to keep up the watch, and himself stole down the street to the house whence the man had come.

Looking up at it, there were no indications that it was occupied.

Pulling from his pocket a false mustache and a wig, he donned them quickly, keenly alive to any signal Patsy might give, and, mounting the steps, rang the bell.

Chick had a notion in his head that he wanted to satisfy.

There was no response, though he rang several times.

Then he tried the outer door. It opened to him, and he found himself in a vestibule. The inner doors were locked.

He picked the lock quickly and stepped into a dark hall. There were no signs or sounds of life within the house, but all was darkness.

Chick drew his revolver, and then took from his coat pocket his lantern.

Feeling for the parlor door, he entered that room and listened. Then he flashed his lantern. It was empty. By the light he located the stairs, and shutting it off, cautiously climbed them to the second floor, where he listened again.

There was no sound of anything. Again flashing his light, he found an open door in front of him.

He entered. On the bed was a lot of women’s clothes. He examined them. It was a complete woman’s costume.

On a chair was some men’s apparel.

Chick went back to the woman’s clothes and muttered:

“It is just what I thought.”

He gave a hasty glance at the bureau. On it was a lot of paint and cosmetic; several false beards, mustaches and wigs.

“I’ve got this for a certainty.”

He bounded out of the room, going hurriedly into every part of the house. It was empty; not a soul in it.

He went to the front door, and as he did so he heard some one on the outside.

He darted into the parlor and not a moment too soon, for some one entered and hastily ran upstairs in the dark.

Quick as a flash and as a light shone forth on the second floor, Chick slipped out of the front doors and down the steps.

Reaching the sidewalk, he sounded a low whistle.

Promptly came the response; Chick bounded in its direction.

Patsy appeared from under a stoop; Chick went to him.

“Who went into that house?” he asked.

“The same one who came out. He came back all of a sudden, as if he had just thought of something, nearly catching me. Who came out just now?”

“I did.”

“The devil!”

“Yes; I’ve been through the house. There wasn’t a soul in it.”

“But the woman who went in?”

“Patsy, I’ve tumbled to a big thing. The woman who went in and the man who came out are the same person. But hurry off, Patsy, rig up and find my trail. There’s business on hand.”

Patsy dashed away and was hardly out of sight, when Chick saw the young man come from the house and hurriedly pass up Seventeenth Street.

Chick was after him quickly, a piece of red chalk in his hand. The lineman had disappeared.