PATSY TURNS CROOK.
Patsy Garvan needed no instructions beyond those contained in Nick
Carter’s note, nor additional information as to the position Kate
Crandall had taken. It was plain enough to Patsy, and he shaped his
course accordingly.
Knowing that the woman might incidentally have seen him from her window,
and that she would recall him suspiciously if they met later, Patsy
entered the corridor of a near building and put on a disguise with which
he was provided. It by no means improved him, however, for it gave him a
decidedly tough and hangdog appearance.
“It’s good enough for the work to be done,” he tersely soliloquized, not
anticipating how effectively it was to serve him.
Returning to the street, Patsy found a concealment from which he could
stealthily watch the door of the bank building, prepared to await the
departure of Kate Crandall or size up any visitor she might receive. His
vigil was not rewarded until five o’clock, when Kate came out and walked
quickly up the street.
“Gee! she’s a peach, all right,” thought Patsy sententiously, who until
then had had merely a glimpse at her through her office window. “She
evidently has quit work for the day and is heading for home.”
Patsy, was right. He also inferred from the woman’s darkly handsome face
that she was not in an enviable frame of mind. He stealthily followed
her out of the business district and to an attractive outskirt of the
town. There, just as she was turning a corner, a well-dressed man
stepped from a near yard and spoke to her.
Patsy saw her draw back, as if confronted by a stranger, and then he saw
the man’s face, and recognized him.
“Holy smoke!” he muttered, slinking back of a tree. “This does settle
it. That’s Turk Magill, gangster and all-around bad egg, as sure as I’m
a foot high. She just about employed him to get the gospel dispenser
and--no, by Jove, she don’t appear to know him. I must be wrong.”
Cautiously watching them, Patsy presently decided that he was right, and
that Kate Crandall was not acquainted with Turk Magill. She remained
talking with him, nevertheless, frowning darkly while likening to his
earnest utterances, yet occasionally glancing apprehensively toward a
house around the corner.
“Gee! he’s got something on her,” thought Patsy, after a few moments.
“That’s dead open and shut, or she wouldn’t listen to him. She’s doing
so under protest; that’s a cinch.”
Magill was a well-built, florid man, a thousand times more prepossessing
externally than within, and Patsy quickly saw that the rascal’s
arguments, persuasion, or of whatever his talk consisted, would not
immediately prove effective.
He saw, too, that he could not directly approach the couple without
incurring suspicion, but that he might hasten around the square and
approach them through the other street, possibly getting a line on their
talk by passing near them.
“It’s worth trying,” he said to himself. “The woman, at least, cannot
give me the slip.”
Patsy did not defer this move. Sheltered by the tree then hiding him, he
retraced his steps and darted through a near street, presently rounding
the square and sauntering toward the couple from the other direction.
While he still was some fifty yards away, however, Kate Crandall
abruptly left Magill and hastened to the dwelling at which she had
repeatedly glanced.
Patsy rightly inferred that it was where she boarded. He passed her just
as she was entering the gate, noting that she looked pale and disturbed,
and had an ugly gleam in her black eyes.
Patsy also saw that Magill was watching her from around the corner and
knowing the utterly depraved and desperate character of the crook, he
instantly adopted a ruse that he thought might prove profitable and
enable him to get a line on the game Magill was playing.
Though he heard Kate enter the house and close the door, Patsy
repeatedly glanced back over his shoulder, as if hard hit with her
flashy style and personal beauty.
Upon turning the corner and coming face to face with Magill, however,
Patsy pretended to see him for the first time, and to realize that his
own covert admiration of the woman had been detected. He grinned,
remarking rudely, as if by way of explanation:
“Don’t often see one like her. Lucky for me she went under cover, or I’d
have got a crook in my neck looking backward.”
Magill looked at him sharply. It was then that Patsy’s hangdog disguise
proved advantageous. Magill saw, that he was not going to stop, or so it
appeared, and he said quickly:
“Wait a bit!”
“Wait for what?” questioned Patsy, pausing.
Magill eyed him searchingly for several seconds “You’d wait for the
skirt, wouldn’t you?” he asked, with unmistakable significance.
Patsy grinned again expressively.
“Rather!” said he. “I’d wait for her till I hadn’t a leg to stand on.”
“You might do worse, pal,” said Magill suggestively.
“You mean I couldn’t do better,” returned Patsy. “But I’m not in the
class with swell skirts like her.”
“She’s not so swell.”
“Isn’t she?”
Patsy looked surprised and his eyes took on a light well in keeping with
his disguised countenance. He now shrewdly surmised that Magill had a
use for him, that he had designs that he could not carry out alone, and
that he needed a confederate. This suited Patsy to the letter. He added
incredulously, nevertheless, lest his inference and readiness might be
suspected:
“That don’t go down. There’s nothing in it--nothing for me.”
“Think not?”
“That’s what.”
“I can put you in a way to become friendly with her,” said Magill, with
squinting scrutiny.
“You can?” Patsy demanded.
“Surest thing you know. But you’d have to take chances,” Magill
pointedly added.
“Chances, eh? Chances cut no ice with me. I’d take the longest ever.”
“Is that right?” asked Magill, smiling.
“Try me and see,” said Patsy; then abruptly: “Say, what’s your game? You
ain’t stringing me along in this fashion for nothing.”
“I’m trying to get your measure,” Magill frankly admitted.
“Is that so?” Patsy spoke with affected resentment. “What do you want of
it? How do you like it, as far as you’ve got?”
“You look all right,” Magill vouchsafed dryly.
“Well, I ain’t dolled up for anything,” Patsy bluntly asserted. “I’m
just as you see me, all on the surface. Take it or leave it. It’s up to
you.”
Magill was favorably impressed, and he waxed confidential.
“See here, pal, what’s your name?” he inquired.
“Jack Dolan,” said Patsy readily.
“Do you hang out around here?”
“Not so far away I can’t hoof it.”
“What’s your business?”
“Chauffeur--when I’m in on a job,” said Patsy, at random, but he again
shot luckily. “I’m looking for one just now, but not looking too hard.”
“Would you take a mighty soft one?” Magill questioned.
“Would a duck swim?”
“And take chances?”
“Any you’ll take,” said Patsy. “You can gamble on that.”
“If I can gamble safely on it,” Magill replied, “I can put you on easy
street, and do it without much risk.”
“You can, eh?”
“Believe me--I can!”
“Say, you cut loose, then,” said Patsy, drawing nearer. “You don’t need
to beat around any more bushes. I’ll go up against anything for coin, if
there’s enough of it, or for that skirt. You start right in with the
bridle off and hand out your dye stuff. You’ll find me game, all right.”
Magill really thought so, now, so well had Patsy played his part. He
laid his finger on Patsy’s arm, saying more impressively:
“Listen to me, Dolan. If you mean all you say, I can put you in right to
share in a barrel of money. It’s not a case of crack a bank or pull off
any kind of a dangerous job. The coin is where it can be easily
got--barring one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Forcing a certain party to say where it’s hidden.”
“The coin?”
“Yes.”
“Who hid it?”
“Never mind who hid it, Dolan,” Magill objected. “Don’t you get too
inquisitive. The party who hid it had no legitimate claim on it. He
stole it. Furthermore, he’s dead. There will never be a kick from him.
All we need do in order to get it is to force a certain party to
squeal.”
“How much coin is there?” asked Patsy, displaying a steadily increasing
interest.
“A quarter million.”
“Come again! Say that just once more.”
“A quarter million.”
“I reckoned I must have misunderstood. Say, you ain’t nutty, are you?”
questioned Patsy, with a suspicious growl. “Your dome ain’t cracked, is
it?”
“Not a crack in it,” Magill earnestly assured him. “I’m handing you
straight goods. There’s a quarter million that may be had for--well,
Dolan, for a mere bit of chesty work. You wouldn’t get in on it, mind
you, only I cannot get word to pals of mine in time to use them. I want
a little help.”
“For what?”
“To take that skirt where she can be properly questioned,” Magill said
pointedly.
“Take her where?”
“To a house about three miles from here.”
“What’s the matter with a hack or a buzz wagon?”
“Either would fill the bill,” said Magill. “There is only one
difficulty.”
“What’s that?”
“The skirt says she won’t go,” Magill explained suggestively.
“Oh, ho; I see!” said Patsy, with eyes dilating. “You want to force her
to go?”
“That calls the turn,” answered Magill. “She has agreed to meet me at
the end of this street just before dark to finish the spiel I was having
with her. She wouldn’t end it here for fear she’d be seen from the house
where she boards.”
“I get you.”
“There are only a few scattered houses at the end of the street, and
that’s the direction I, want to take her,” Magill added. “Now, if you’re
not a bird head, you can see how easy it can be, done.”
“You mean to kidnap her?” said Patsy quickly.
“That’s the game.”
“And you want me to help?”
“If you’ve got the nerve.”
“I’ve got nerve enough, all right,” declared Patsy. “But what do I get
for this job?”
“Enough money to buy a corner lot on Broadway,” Magill forcibly assured
him. “That’s all I want of you, too, and it’s all the risk you have to
take.”
“When do I get the coin, and how much?”
“Ten thousand bucks, possibly more, within twenty-four hours.”
“After nailing the skirt?”
“Exactly.”
“I’m hooked,” said Patsy, as if abruptly deciding to accept the offer.
“Spiel off what you want done and I’ll do it.”
“Shake!” said Magill, extending his hand. “I thought I read your mug
correctly. My name is Mike Magill, sometimes called Turk Magill, and
you’ll find me all right and always on the level.”
“If that goes, Mr. Magill, I’m your meat for any kind of a job,” said
Patsy. “A quarter million, eh? Say, I’m afraid I’ll wake up. Hang it,
I’d wade through blood for that. What am I to do?”
“We’ll need a touring car,” said Magill.
“I know a garage where I can swipe one.”
“Swiping it might make trouble for us. Could you hire it?”
“Sure--if I had the price,” said Patsy.
“Here’s a twenty-dollar note. Will that be enough?”
“More than enough.”
“Take it, then,” said Magill. “It shows you, too, that I mean business.”
“I’m wise to that, all right.”
“Do your part, Dolan, and you’ll get a hundred bucks for every dime in
that twenty,” Magill added impressively.
“You leave it to me,” Patsy rejoined. “That skirt is as good as on her
way.”