CHICK’S STRANGE ENCOUNTER.
The three detectives went to the door, but on reaching it, Merton said:
“I think I’ll have to leave you here. My business will make me stay
here, for I see that my man is getting pretty well loaded, and I must
keep an eye on him.”
Chick and Patsy therefore shook hands with him, thanking him for the
assistance he had given them.
While they talked at the door, a young man and a young woman entered
from the street and, walking some distance into the place, suddenly
stopped, peered forward earnestly, and then hastily turning, went out
into the street again.
The action had been observed by Patsy, who made up his mind that they
had seen somebody at the tables they desired to escape. He watched them
go to the corner and engage in earnest conversation.
After a moment, they went under the cover of the corner, where Patsy
could see that she took off her hat.
A moment later, they stepped out again into the light and, to Patsy’s
great surprise, she was a very different looking person.
Before she had been a blonde, and now she seemed to be dark haired.
“She had a wig on,” said Patsy to himself. “Now I wonder what was the
meaning of that?”
The couple stood on the corner a little longer, then the two went to the
curbstone and, entering a hansom cab, were driven off.
Patsy turned to Chick and Merton, who had been conversing while he had
thus been watching the couple, thinking that strange sights were to be
seen in the Tenderloin late at night.
Chick, slipping his arm under Patsy’s, now led him to the sidewalk, and
the two turned down Broadway.
“Well, Patsy,” said Chick. “I don’t know how much we have gained
to-night, but I take it that it is a good deal.”
“Do you think,” asked Patsy, as they walked along, “that the young
Englishman, the girl Alice talked of, was our man Ellison?”
“That notion has got into my head,” said Chick. “And if it is so, it
will be a big opening for us. We’ve got a way of finding out, however,
and that is, by finding if Ellison was on a yachting trip last
September.”
“And,” added Patsy, “whether he was in the habit of running over to
Philadelphia much.”
“That’s so,” said Chick, “I don’t think there is any use of following up
Lannigan and the woman, Ladew.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Patsy. “We might stumble on their
associates if we did.”
“Well,” said Chick, “if that is so, we had better go back and watch the
front of that place to see them come out.”
They had walked along as they had thus talked and had, therefore, gotten
something like two blocks below.
Chick turned about, suddenly, saying:
“You’re right about that, Patsy, and we won’t drop them until we see
where they go.”
They walked back hastily until they reached the corner on which Patsy
had seen the couple that had attracted his attention.
Here they heard a voice calling some one, and, turning to look, saw a
woman beckoning to them from a hansom cab drawn up to the sidewalk.
Although she was in the shadow of the cab, Patsy thought that it was the
one whom he had been watching while at the restaurant door, and who he
had seen put on a wig.
They went to the cab, and the woman, addressing Chick, said to him:
“I want to speak with you a moment, and alone.”
Hearing this, Patsy stepped aside and Chick went up closer.
“I know who you are,” said the woman.
“But I don’t know who you are,” answered Chick.
“It is not necessary that you should,” replied the woman, “and, as a
matter of fact, I don’t intend that you shall.”
Chick looked up at her quickly and saw that the woman was earnest in her
manner, by no means coquettish or trifling. He said:
“What is it you want to say to me?”
“I know that you are one of the assistants of Nick Carter,” the woman
said. “Your name is Chick, and I know that you are looking for Mr.
Ellison, who disappeared so suddenly from the Sanborn house to-day.”
Chick thought rapidly, and concluded that more was to be gained in
admitting the fact than in denying it.
“Won’t you enter this cab and talk with me?” said the young woman.
Giving a signal to Patsy which meant that Patsy was to follow wherever
he went, Chick called out, loudly:
“Good-night, old boy, I’ll see you some time to-morrow.”
He climbed into the cab and took the seat as the young woman made way
for him.
Patsy turned after calling back a good-night and walked hastily up the
street until he reached a dark doorway into which he quickly dodged,
from which point he watched the cab.
“Tell the driver,” said the young woman, “to drive away from here.”
“Where?” asked Chick.
“Anywhere, so that we will not be so conspicuous.”
Chick told the driver to cross Broadway and, driving to Sixth Avenue, to
go down that avenue until the _Herald_ Building was reached.
Having done this, he asked the young woman what was the meaning of her
movements.
“I want you to tell me,” she said, “whether you have found anything
about the whereabouts of Mr. Ellison.”
“No,” replied Chick, “we have only just begun the search.”
“Do you know why he so suddenly disappeared?”
“No,” replied Chick, “if we did, we would not be long in finding where
he is.”
“You will find it difficult to find him. You are following up the Ladew
woman for that purpose.”
Chick turned to look at the woman, but her head was turned away, as if
she was in deep thought. She continued:
“I don’t think you will find much in following her up. He has broken
with her.”
“Then he knew her and was in relation with her?” asked Chick.
“It was only a foolish flirtation on his part,” said the young woman,
and Chick noticed that there was a great deal of bitterness in her tone.
She paused for a moment or two, and then went on:
“The Ladew woman is an eccentric person, and she followed him up so that
he could not get away from her. But he had to break when his marriage
with Miss Sanborn approached; there was a great row.”
By this time Chick was much puzzled to know what relation this woman
bore to Ellison and what her interest in the matter was. The question
entered his mind as to whether or not this was not the woman who had
written to Nick the two letters which had so excited their curiosity.
He knew from what she had said in the beginning that it was useless to
ask who she was, or what her name was, but he determined upon a sudden
and bold play.
“Who were you trying to strike,” he asked, “when you wrote those two
letters to-day to my chief, Nick Carter?”
The young woman started violently, turning to Chick in a frightened
manner.
“What do you mean by that? What letters?”
“The letters which warned the chief that an attempt would be made to rob
the Sanborns and that a woman was at the bottom of Ellison’s
disappearance.”
“How do you know that I wrote them?”
The question was almost gasped out.
“I don’t know,” replied Chick, “but I do know that the chief knows who
wrote them.”
“Does he know me?”
“The chief knows everything,” replied Chick. “No sooner had he received
those letters than he started to find out who wrote them.”
“And he found out?”
“Of course he did.”
“And it was me?”
The woman suddenly laughed a mocking laugh, and Chick knew that whether
the woman had written the letters or not, his play had not counted.
“If you knew as much as all that,” she said, “you would know who I am,
and that’s what you don’t know.”
To this Chick could make no reply, for he felt that though her first
fright indicated that she was indeed the woman who had written the
letters, she had now regained possession of herself and that it was
useless for him to hope to surprise her into an admission. He took
another tack.
“What interest have you got in this matter?” he asked.
“Wouldn’t anybody be interested in so mysterious a thing as happened at
the Sanborns?”
Again she laughed mockingly at Chick.
“How did you come to know me?” asked Chick.
“Are you not a celebrated person, and doesn’t everybody know Chickering
Carter, the great Nick Carter’s chief assistant?”
Chick knew now that the young woman was playing with him, and that he
did not have easy game before him.
“No,” he said, “I am not so celebrated in the circles in which you move
that you would know me.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked the young woman.
“I mean that you saw me for the first time to-day, and that it was at
the Sanborn house where I was on duty and you were there as a guest.”
By the way the young woman took this reply, Chick knew that he had
scored a point, but did not know how much of a one it was.
“Did you see me there?” she asked.
“Not that I recollect,” replied Chick. “Perhaps it is very wrong for me
that I should have failed to observe so charming a person as yourself.”
“None of that, please,” sharply returned the young woman.
She was silent a moment, and then said:
“Yes, I was there, and one of the few who knew that Mr. Ellison left the
house.”
Chick started. It suddenly broke on him that the person beside him was
one of the bridesmaids, and yet he could not be certain.
While he was thinking this over, she asked:
“Do you know how Mr. Ellison left the house?”
Again Chick thought rapidly, and concluded that he would gain more by
answering the question straightly.
“We think,” he said, “that he left concealed by a great cape coat that
had been worn into the house by another man, and that he had a wig and
beard on to resemble that man.”
“Who was that man?”
“We don’t know.”
“He was left in the house after Mr. Ellison went out. Was he not seen?”
“No, he escaped from the house by a back window into the back yard, and
so into the cross street.”
“What sort of a man was he?”
“A man with a pointed, glossy black beard, black eyes, heavy black
eyebrows and long black hair, curling a little at the ends.”
The young woman was thoughtful for a moment or two, sitting with her
finger to her lips, which she bit nervously, while her brows were
knitted.
Chick broke in on her thoughts.
“Was this man connected with the robbery or the attempt to rob?”
“I don’t think so,” said the young woman; “that was another part of it.”
“You mean,” asked Chick, “that the robbery was connected with Mr.
Ellison’s disappearance?”
“Oh, no,” said the young woman. “The robbery was a consequence of Mr.
Ellison’s knowing certain people----”
She started suddenly, and, facing Chick, said:
“You’re clever. You nearly trapped me. I will confess to you that I
wrote both those letters. I learned by accident of this robbing
attempt, and tried to stop it by informing Mr. Carter.”
“That’s what you said,” said Chick. “You did stop it.”
“I know nothing of those people,” she said, “except that, through a
certain connection, they were attempting to use Mr. Ellison.”
“Do you want Mr. Ellison found?” suddenly asked Chick.
“Yes. I am----”
She stopped and, looking Chick keenly in the eyes, said:
“I will talk no more to-night. I was anxious to know what you have told
me. I do not know enough to tell you anything more of importance. I may
learn something, and, if I do, I will manage to make Mr. Carter know it.
Now, get out, and let me go away.”
Believing that he could accomplish no more, and certain that Patsy was
not far away, Chick descended from the carriage, lifted his hat, and
walked away.
The hansom cab, containing the young woman, immediately went over to
Broadway and, turning up that street, was driven quite rapidly.
But it had not gone the space of a block when another cab drove after
it, and Chick saw a hand wave from the window.
Jumping across the street, Chick found a cab on the corner, and, hastily
calling the driver, said:
“Follow that cab, and don’t lose sight of it. If you kill your horse,
I’ll pay for it.”
And an instant later, and as the clock over the _Herald_ office sounded
the hour of two, he was following in hot haste the cab containing Patsy,
which, in turn, was following the one occupied by the young woman.