A PIECE OF PLASTER.
It was after four o’clock when Patsy Garvan emerged into Madison Avenue
to begin the work assigned him, starting from home somewhat in advance
of Nick and Chick, and heading immediately for Forty-fourth Street.
“It’s no dead open-and-shut cinch where to find a blackbird as fly as
Cora Cavendish at this hour of the day,” he said to himself. “She may be
taking in a matinée, or the movies, or having a spin with some gink in a
buzz car. I’ll tackle her apartments in the Nordeck, for a starter, and
if I can learn nothing there, or from the office clerk--well, I’ll cross
that bridge when I get to it. I sure have got to find her by some hook
or crook.”
Ten minutes brought Patsy to his destination, an apartment house in
Forty-fourth Street, patronized largely by women of the same social
status as his quarry. He entered the office on the street floor, when,
with a thrill of satisfaction, he beheld the very woman he was seeking.
“Gee, this is going some!” he mentally exclaimed. “There she is, now,
and rigged for the street. I’ll buy a cigar, at least, as a blind for
butting in here.”
Although in disguise and quite sure that the woman did not know him by
sight, even, Patsy reasoned that any unusual incident might arouse her
misgivings, if she really was engaged in the knavery Nick suspected.
Patsy sauntered to a cigar case near the clerk’s desk, therefore, and
made his purchase without another glance at the woman.
Cora Cavendish was emerging from the elevator when Patsy entered. She
was a tall, slender woman close upon thirty, with an abundance of
bleached hair, thin features, a rather pretty face aside from its
paleness, and a certain sinister and crafty expression in her gray eyes.
She was fashionably clad and was drawing on a pair of long, lavender kid
gloves.
Passing within three feet of Patsy, and wafting to his nostrils a
pronounced aroma of heliotrope sachet, she paused for a moment and said
to the clerk, with a quick and somewhat metallic voice:
“If Guy Morton shows up and asks for me, Mr. Hardy, tell him I’ll return
in twenty minutes.”
“All right, Miss Cavendish,” nodded the clerk. “I’ll bear it in mind.”
“I have a date with him,” Cora added. “But he may tire of waiting and
come looking for me.”
“Tire of waiting for you--impossible!” Hardy observed, with a grin.
“Oh, quit your kidding!” retorted the woman, laughing. “You hand him my
message, Hardy, and give him the key to my suite.”
“I’ll do so, Cora.”
“Good for you. Tell him to wait, mind you.”
“No need to tell him that,” Hardy returned, as the woman swept out of
the office.
Patsy already had left the counter after lighting his cigar, and he
passed out only a few yards behind the woman.
“Now, by Jove, if she doesn’t take a taxi, I shall have soft walking,”
he said to himself. “Guy Morton, eh? I never heard of him. When I see
him, if so lucky, I may possibly know his face.”
Patsy’s wish was granted, in that Cora Cavendish did not take a
conveyance. She walked briskly through Forty-fourth Street to Sixth
Avenue, then turned north and increased her pace, gliding with a sort of
sinuous grace through the throng of pedestrians.
“Gee! she’s in some hurry,” thought Patsy, at a discreet distance behind
her. “If she can go to keep a date with the said Morton and return to
her apartments in twenty minutes, she cannot be going very far. To some
other hotel, perhaps, or some saloon with a side door for the fair sex.”
Patsy had hit the nail very nearly on the head. A few minutes later he
saw his quarry enter a popular café in one of the side streets, where
she paused and questioned a man seated at a high desk near the door.
She evidently obtained the information she wanted. For, passing directly
through the place, Cora entered one of the several private dining rooms
in the rear, quickly closing the door.
It was not done so quickly, however, as to prevent Patsy, who had
immediately stepped into the front saloon, from getting a momentary
glimpse of the interior of the private room.
He saw that the lace-draped window was partly open, that a man answering
Nick’s description of Hawley was seated at a damask-covered table, and
that on the latter stood a bottle of wine, partly drank, and two
glasses. He also saw, nevertheless, that there was no other occupant of
the room.
“He’s still waiting for her,” he reasoned. “Waiting for her with an
extra glass. That’s the reporter Nick described, as sure as I’m a foot
high, and probably Deland himself. I’ll mighty soon find out.”
Patsy turned and found the man at the desk eying him suspiciously, and
he took no chance of a subsequent warning being sent to the suspected
couple, but immediately seized the bull by the horns. Stepping close to
the desk, he displayed his detective badge and said quietly, but in a
way he knew would be effective:
“I am in Nick Carter’s employ, and I happen to know that you are the man
who runs this place. If you wish to continue running it, you hand me
straight goods and keep your trap closed. Whom has Cora Cavendish gone
in there to meet?”
The change that came over the man’s face convinced Patsy that he needed
to say nothing more threatening. The mention of Nick Carter’s name had
been enough. The man at once replied, moreover, with lowered voice:
“I’ll not yip; not on your life. She has joined a man named Morton. He’s
been waiting for her.”
“How long?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Nothing; not a thing. Both come here now and then to lunch, or to buy
wine. I have known the woman for a time, but not the man.”
“Is either adjoining dining room vacant?”
“Yes, both of them.”
“I’ll go into the one on the right,” said Patsy, with a glance at the
several closed doors. “Call that waiter away, so he’ll not be butting in
there.”
“You mean into your room?”
“That’s what. Let him serve the couple, if they order anything, but you
make sure that he doesn’t put them wise to me, or to anything else, or
your license will go so high in the air you could not see it with the
Lick telescope.”
The proprietor actually turned pale, so impressive was Patsy, and he
muttered quickly:
“You leave it to me. I’ll fix the waiter, all right. Go ahead as soon as
you please.”
“Gee! I’ve got him well muzzled,” thought Patsy, now seeking the
adjoining dining room. “He looks as if I already had put his place on
the blink. He wouldn’t dare say his soul’s his own. Now, by Jove, I must
get in unheard.”
Patsy opened and closed the door noiselessly, entering the room. It was
like that occupied by Cora Cavendish and her companion, but the
plastered wall between the two rooms precluded playing the eavesdropper
in that direction.
Turning to the window, therefore, Patsy began to raise it by slow
degrees until he could lean out cautiously. He then found that the other
window was only four feet away, and through the opening, for it had been
raised several inches for ventilation, he could hear the voices of the
suspected couple.
One object caught his eye, moreover, that alone served to confirm the
theory Nick had formed.
Cora Cavendish had taken a chair, but had drawn it away from the table.
She was seated close to the open window. She had removed her long
lavender gloves and her left arm was rested on the window sill, her
fingers toying with the lace draperies.
Between the filmy curtains Patsy caught sight of her hand and arm, bare
nearly to the elbow.
On the fleshy part of it, directly over one of the blueish veins, was
nearly a square inch of pink court plaster.
“By gracious, that clinches it!” thought Patsy. “The chief is right.
That plaster covers the cut from which some blood was taken. Give us
time, now, and we’ll surely deliver the goods.”
In the meantime, with ears alert, he could hear Cora Cavendish saying a
bit sharply, as if irritated:
“I cannot be in two places at once, can I? Cut out your kicking and get
down to business. I came here as soon as I could after doing the other
job.”
“Well, what’s the result?” demanded her companion curtly. “Did you see
him?”
“Gee! that’s Deland’s voice, all right,” thought Patsy. “He is not
disguising it, now, and there’s no mistaking it.”
“Sure I saw him,” said Cora, still snappishly.
“What did he say?”
“What you’ll not like to hear, Mortie, take it from me.”
“Use my other name, you fool! I’m not looking for a free ride up the
river.”
“None can hear us in this place,” said Cora, less petulantly. “I’ll tell
you what he said, Guy. He called me down in good shape, along with all
the rest of us, over my shoulder. He’s up in the air a mile.”
“He’ll come down,” said Deland, with sinister coldness.
“Don’t be so sure of it.”
“I’ll find a way to bring him down, then.”
“He’s nursing an awful kick.”
“He’ll kick against a brick wall, Cora, in that case,” Deland said, with
an icy assurance that Patsy readily remembered. “I’ll puncture his tires
so quickly that he’ll turn turtle.”
“Well, mebbe so,” allowed the woman doubtfully.
“What more did he say?” Deland continued. “Did you get any part of the
coin?”
“Not a copper of it,” said Cora curtly.
“Why was that?”
“He says that he won’t settle.”
“Won’t settle!”
Patsy heard Deland’s teeth meet with a sudden fierce snap.
“That’s what he said, Guy, and he as good as fired me out of the crib,”
replied Cora inelegantly. “You’ll have to see him yourself if you----”
“See him--you bet I’ll see him,” Deland broke forth in tones that would
have chilled an ordinary hearer. “I’ll see him, all right, and I’ll lose
no time about it.”
“What need of rushing things?”
“Need enough.”
“Why? Won’t it keep?”
“No, hang it, nothing keeps when that infernal sleuth takes up a case,”
Deland snarled viciously. “You don’t yet know what has happened.”
“Sleuth--what sleuth?” Cora’s arm vanished like a flash from Patsy’s
cautious gaze, when she swung round in her chair. “You don’t mean----”
“You ought to guess what I mean, Cora, and whom.”
“Not--not Nick Carter?”
“Yes. May the devil get him--and I’ll help him do so.”
“What has occurred?” Cora demanded, voice quaking.
“Carter began an investigation this morning,” Deland now informed her.
“I was there in disguise to learn who was put on the case and what was
suspected. Phelan, the headquarters man, was the first to show up, and
he played dead easy into our hands.”
“He got after Gordon?”
“He sent a gun to get him, and I now know that Gordon was arrested and
taken down to headquarters, along with the evidence against him.”
“Why are you so stewed, then? That ought to be good enough.”
“So it would be--if it had lasted!” snapped Deland.
“Lasted--what do you mean?”
“I mean that Carter showed up at the house a little later and had a look
at things,” Deland explained. “He didn’t know me from a side of leather,
but he refused to let me in or to put me wise to what he suspected. He
flew down to headquarters, instead, and Gordon was liberated.”
“Is that so?”
“When Carter returned he told the reporters that there had been no
arrest, and that the whole business in so far as Gordon was concerned
was a mistake.”
“That looks mighty bad,” said Cora, after a moment. “How do you size it
up?”
“Hang the cursed dick, Cora, there’s only one way to size it up,” Deland
again replied, with a snarl. “Carter got wise to something, enough to
warrant his taking the chance of liberating Gordon.”
“That’s evident enough.”
“I then decided to bolt. I thought he might light on me next. That’s why
I’m stewed and so hot around the collar,” Deland went on, with bitter
ferocity.
“But this job----”
“The job must be wound up at once,” snapped Deland, again interrupting.
“We must have that promised coin before Carter can get in his work.
Won’t settle, eh? By heavens, I’ll soon see whether he’ll settle. He’ll
settle, all right, or he’ll hear something drop.”
“But----”
“There aren’t any buts to it,” Deland fiercely insisted. “This trick
must be turned and turned at once. Did you leave him at home?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’ll get after him, then, and bring him down to cases. You move lively,
too, and get next to Flynn. Tell him where I have gone and that I may
need help. Send Plugger out there with Daggett and Tobey. Tell them to
nose round till they find out what’s doing. Come on at once. There’s no
time to lose.”
Patsy Garvan heard the viciously determined rascal push back his chair
from the table with a violence that upset one of the glasses and broke
it. The tinkling of the falling glass easily reached his ears, and in
another moment he heard the couple hurriedly leaving the room.
“Gee! he’s off with blood in his eye, all right,” thought Patsy. “He
must have been talking about Jack Madison, though it’s no dead-sure
thing. I’ll follow him and find out. Plugger Flynn, eh? So he was in the
job, along with Jim Daggett and Buck Tobey, three fine East Side
blacklegs. Thundering guns! I’m on the hind seat of the wagon, but I
don’t believe they can shake me.”
The last arose in his mind when, emerging from the private dining room,
he discovered that Deland and Cora Cavendish already were passing into
the street, in which the daylight of the October afternoon was merging
into dusk.
Seeing that neither of the suspects was looking back, however, Patsy
darted after them and quickly reached the street.
Deland was springing into a taxicab, and in another moment he was riding
rapidly away, so rapidly that pursuit was out of the question.
Cora Cavendish paused briefly on the curbing to watch the swiftly
departing car, and then she turned abruptly and hurried away.
“Hang it! I’ve lost him temporarily, at least, do what I might,” Patsy
muttered. “There’s nothing to it, now. I have only one string to my bow.
I will follow the woman.”