INVESTIGATION.
Hastening up a flight of steps that were a replica of the steps in the
cellar of the empty house, Chick found that the door at the top was
securely fastened.
“Just what I expected,” he muttered. “But I guess I can get it open.
There’s only a wooden button on the other side. I might break the door
right through, but it would make too much noise. My knife will fix it.”
One of the blades of his jackknife was long and thin. He thrust this
between the door and the jamb, and pushed the button out of the way.
“Ridiculously easy!” he said to himself. Then, to Patsy: “We have to
get at the outer doors, you know—the one into the kitchen regions, as
well as the other on the main floor. The worst of it is that they are
on the other side of the house. We’ll have to make our way there. Or,
rather, I shall.”
“What about me?” asked Patsy.
“Stay where you are, in the dark. It will be better to have you ready
in case I need help, than to let you get into the muss with me. Don’t
you see that?”
“I s’pose you’re right,” grumbled Patsy. “But I don’t like this waitin’
game. Maybe I won’t get into it at all. Things are always breakin’
wrong for me. Just when I’m all primed up for a rough-house, I’m put on
guard duty, like a boy at a henroost. Holy Perkins! It’s tough!”
Chick did not stop to argue with his companion. It was clear that if
Nick Carter and three or four policemen were to get into the house,
they could not take the time to dribble through the opening in the
cellar wall by which Chick and Patsy had made their way from one cellar
to the other.
When they came up the steps from the cellar, they were on the basement
floor, level with the bottom of the courtyard in front of the house,
and below what was known as the parlor floor, with its main hall
leading to the principal door to the street, at the top of the stone
steps outside.
Passing along the stone-floored hallway, after making sure that Patsy
was out of sight at the door by which they had come up from the cellar,
Chick found a door closed, but under which could be seen a line of
dusky red light.
He realized that he was coming near to the heart of the mystery he and
Nick had set out to solve.
Feeling for the latch, he discovered, with a thrill of satisfaction,
that it was not fastened. He lifted it without difficulty and also
absolutely without sound. Then he took a peep through the crack he had
made when he pushed the door a little way open.
At first, he hesitated to open the door even wide enough to permit him
to peep in. He remembered the five men he had seen in the other room on
the floor above, and it would not have surprised him to find as many
working down here in the cellar.
But the room was empty, although evidence that somebody was close at
hand was not wanting.
It was a large apartment, that looked in a general way like a kitchen.
Only, there was no kitchen range, nor pots, pans, or dishes—at least,
no utensils such as are generally employed in an ordinary dwelling
house in the culinary quarters.
A large pine table was the only piece of furniture. There was not even
a chair to be seen.
On the table was an electric battery, an iron ladle, a few tools, and
some slabs of white plaster of oblong form.
Over the table glimmered a gas jet turned too low to yield any light.
The red glow that Chick had seen under the door came from a large,
square stove of peculiar make, which stood out a little way from the
wall opposite the door by which he had entered.
“That stove was never made for honest use,” thought Chick. “You could
not even cook an egg on that thing. And I’m betting with myself that
I know just what that stove is doing in this place. It’s cooking new
money, or I’m a long way off in my guess.”
There were two other doors in the room. One of them, he judged, led
into the house, while the other probably connected with the stone
hallway ending at the outer door to the front yard.
“I hear boiling metal hissing on that stove,” he muttered. “The work is
going on, all right. Why, yes! I see the crucible sunk into the stove.
I _knew_ that stove was built for only one kind of use.”
He went over to the door he believed led to the other part of the
house, and found it locked, but the key in the door.
“That’s lucky! I didn’t want to have to stop to break it open. Besides,
it would have made a big noise, and I don’t know how many men may be
close by.”
Once outside the door, which he closed softly as soon as he was
through, he switched on his electric light. What he found was what he
had expected. In one direction were the stairs leading upward to the
“parlor floor,” and in the other was the outer door to the front yard.
Farther along the wall he saw the door into the room he had just left,
so that it was possible to get to the yard by both exits.
“Now for the yard door,” he said to himself inaudibly. “It’s locked, no
doubt.”
He was right about this. The door—a very heavy one, evidently built to
resist possible attack—was locked, and there was a heavy, rusty bolt
pushed into a massive socket.
Chick could have picked the lock and withdrawn the bolt. That would not
have been a long or difficult operation. But he had had experiences of
this kind before. Therefore, he took another course.
“That rusty bolt would screech like a jackass in agony,” he murmured.
“I could never get it out of the socket without proclaiming to the
whole street what I was doing. I’ll take the liberty of using some
others of the ‘Engineer’s’ tools. I’m glad he is in the den, or he
might be doing something with them, instead of my making honest use of
them.”
Chick grinned at his own conceit, as he took out a mechanical,
automatic screw driver from the canvas bag in which he kept the
implements, each in its own little pocket. With this screw driver he
rapidly took out the screws that held the massive socket of the bolt.
Then he removed the ponderous box of the lock in the same way.
Chick was a good mechanic. He would not have suited Nick Carter
otherwise. So he did his work not only swiftly, but noiselessly, and in
a workmanlike manner. A regular locksmith could not have done it better.
“I’ll have to get back to Patsy, and send him out to telephone,” he
said to himself, when he was satisfied that the outer door to the yard
was not held by anything save the swelling wood, which kept it jammed
against the doorpost, but not too firmly to be dislodged with one good
push. “Let’s see! The chief told me just as I was coming out that he
would be at police headquarters in Jersey City. I wonder whether I’d
better telephone, or whether it wouldn’t be safer to let Patsy go
there.”
He might have asked this of Patsy, only that he preferred to make up
his mind from circumstances, rather than on the advice of anybody—even
so shrewd a young fellow as Patsy Garvan.
When he had made his way back across the room where the metal still
simmered on the funny-looking stove, and was at the door where he had
left Patsy, he had determined on what should be done.
“Patsy!”
“That’s me!”
“Anything happened?”
“Not a thing. As peaceful as West Point on a summer afternoon.”
“Well, get out and see the chief.”
“_See_ him? I thought I was to telephone.”
“I thought so, too, until I had time to think it over.”
“New York?”
“_No!_” growled Chick irritably. “And don’t pretend to be a bonehead,
Patsy, because I know better. I’m talking about the Jersey City
headquarters. Get to the chief, and tell him he can come right in by
the door in the yard at the front of the house. Understand?”
“When you say ‘chief,’ you don’t mean the chief of police of Jersey
City, do you?”
Patsy did not wait for a reply. He just flung this question at Chick
to make him mad. Then he hustled away to deliver his message to Nick
Carter, who was always _the_ chief to himself and Chick.
Patsy had to squeeze through the hole in the cellar wall, but that was
easy.
“When I get time, I’ll take Patsy to Central Park and dump him
headfirst into the lake at a Hundred and Tenth Street,” muttered Chick.
“He’s aching for excitement, and he needs cooling off.”
Chick decided that it might take twenty minutes for Patsy to reach
headquarters and bring Nick and the police back. In the meantime, he
might as well rest a little.
First he went into the back parlor and took another look through the
peephole in the closet at the workmen in the other room. There was no
change in the scene. The engravers and others were still busy, while T.
Burton Potter continued to loll in the rocker, as if he had not a care
in the world.
“A change will come o’er the spirit of his dream before he goes to
bed,” was Chick’s inward remark, with a slow smile. “He may as well be
as comfortable as he can while the wind blows his way. Lord! He is a
lazy-looking loafer! Well, I’ll get to the other house, through that
infernal cellar hole.”
In spite of the fact that there would be an exciting time for Chick
in the course of half an hour or so—or, perhaps, because of it—he
was quite able to compose himself for a nap without allowing future
business to worry him.
He went up the stairs to a back room, where Patsy Garvan had rigged
up a sort of couch for himself while on watch in the house the night
before. It was composed of an empty box and some burlap. Anybody who
happened to be fastidious might have found it unsatisfactory. But it
suited Chick. He was glad to have anything big enough for him to lie
down on.
“There’s one thing about this profession of ours,” he soliloquized,
“that you don’t find in every kind of work. That is, its variety, as
well as its excitement. A fellow never gets dull or lonesome. If he
did, I don’t think he would be any good as a detective.”
Chick looked at the dirty windows, through which glimmered the faintest
reflection from the street arc light already referred to, and was
wondering, in a dreamy sort of way, how many feet it would be from the
window to the ground, in case it should become advisable or necessary
for him to jump out, when he sprang to his feet abruptly, and relieved
himself of the two words, “Blithering idiot!”
As no one was in the room but himself, it might have been a matter of
speculation as to whom he referred, if he had not proceeded rapidly to
make it clear.
“I am an ass—with long ears! I left that door open—the one leading from
the kitchen to the stone hall and front yard door. I know I did. It
was shut and locked, with the key in the door. Why in thunder didn’t I
lock it when I came through? I guess I must have been in too much of a
hurry. If any one goes into that room and sees the door, the beans will
all be spilled, that’s sure.”
The detective knew it would not be long before somebody would be in
the kitchen, to look at the crucible. The door would be found open—and
then—— Well, he did not stop to think about what would probably happen
in that case. He hustled out of the room and down the stairs.
It was quite a trip back to the kitchen. He had to go to the
sub-basement, to the cellar, and squeeze through the hole where the
bricks had been taken out. Then he would have to climb stairs and make
his way through doors, and at every step he might meet from one to six
men, who would kill him with as little compunction as they would smash
a mosquito.
“Fine prospect!” muttered Chick. “But—it’s all in the game!”
He gained the kitchen without interference. The molten metal still
simmered on the stove. Everything was just as he had seen it on his
previous visit. Best of all, nobody was in the place. The person,
whoever he might be in charge of the metal, was still attending to
matters elsewhere.
“The confounded door over there is still open,” continued Chick to
himself. “Just as I left it. Well, I’ll soon fix that.”
He hastened across the room, closed and locked the door, leaving the
key in the door, as before.
“Don’t know how I came to do that! It isn’t like me to forget a door
when I’m in a place full of crooks. I shouldn’t like the chief to know
I’d done it. He’d think I’m going dippy. Well, it’s all right now.
That’s a great comfort.”
He was halfway across the room to the door by which he had entered,
when the latch clicked, and he saw it jump up, indicating that somebody
was pressing it down on the other side.
“Trapped!” muttered Chick. “Cut off, by Jupiter! Now what am I to do?”