TRACKED!
It may be interesting to know just how T. Burton Potter did escape from
the roof when he made that desperate leap in the darkness across the
width of the alley.
Almost any athlete would not think much of clearing nine or ten feet
between marks on the ground, with everything favorable for the feat.
Such performances are done at most athletic meets without causing
surprise or any other particular emotion.
But, sixty feet up in the air, with the certainty that any slip would
mean crashing down on hard stones, a heap of mangled nothingness, it
was a different thing.
If T. Burton Potter had stopped to think for a second, he might have
hesitated. It would have been no reflection on his courage if he had.
But he had no time to think, and over he went.
For a few seconds after landing safely on the other roof, he lay down
behind the parapet. He had two reasons for this. One was to recover
his breath, and the other was to keep out of sight of his pursuers.
“Unless he jumps after me, I’ve got him buffaloed,” whispered Potter
to himself, with a dry chuckle. “I wouldn’t do it again for a million.
What would be the use of fifty millions, even, to a dead man? Now, how
am I to get out of this?”
Keeping under cover of the parapet, he crawled around to the rear of
the roof. There was no parapet here—only an iron gutter. The gutter ran
along to the end of the roof and emptied into an iron pipe which went
straight down to the ground. At least, Potter supposed it did. He could
not see in the darkness.
“I’ve got to take another chance,” he muttered. “And it looks worse
than the other, when I jumped. I don’t like it, but what can I do? I
don’t intend to be caught. I believe even a week in a prison would kill
me, unless it drove me insane.”
Lying flat upon the roof, he gripped the pipe firmly. Then, gingerly,
he lowered himself over the edge of the roof and pinched the pipe
between his knees.
With a double hold on it, hands and knees, he began to inch downward!
“If this pipe should fetch loose, I’m a goner! I hope it will hold. But
it seems awfully shaky.”
The pipe creaked from time to time, and more than once he heard the
rusty spikes which held it to the wall in the rotting mortar grating,
as if they were about to pull out.
But the thing held somehow, and in about ten minutes he was safely on
the ground, uttering a prayer of thankfulness for his luck—for he was
not what could be called a pious man.
He had made up his mind which way he would go if he reached the ground,
and that was over the back fence. Blessed with uncommon agility, as
well as hardened muscles, he swarmed over the high fence without much
difficulty. Then, after sitting astride for a moment or two, he dropped
on the other side.
It was fortunate for him that all the police had withdrawn. They had
concluded, when the raid was over, that there would not be any men
trying to get away in the rear. If they thought anything about T.
Burton Potter, they had decided that he was clear away.
The other side of the high fence only brought him into another back
yard, and he saw that the houses were as high as those on Salisbury
Street.
“If there’s a side alley and gate, I can make it easily,” he murmured.
“Durn my luck, there isn’t!” he added a moment later, after a hasty
survey. “The house is the full width of the yard.”
There were high, wooden fences on both sides. But he did not see that
climbing over them, one after another, was likely to help him. Sooner
or later he would run into somebody in one of the yards. Then he would
have to explain why he was there, and he _might_ have to tell his story
to the chief of police.
“I won’t take any risk of meeting that gentleman, or any of his men, if
it can be helped.”
T. Burton Potter came to this decision very quickly, and with much
earnestness. For reasons of his own, he did not care to be brought into
contact with blue coats and brass buttons on that night of all others.
“It will be daylight in course of time,” he reflected. “Then I should
_have_ to find my way out. I wonder if I can’t get through this house.
It’s the only chance I have!”
He stole up to the back door. It was locked and bolted, of course.
“Didn’t suppose there would be any chance that way,” he muttered. “But
there’s a little window, belonging to a pantry, I guess. By Jove! It’s
open, I see. That’s to let air into the place, for the benefit of the
milk or butter or something.”
The window was too high for Mr. Potter to reach, but, as has been
remarked several times, he was an athlete, and as active as a monkey.
With a short, swift run, he managed to leap up and catch the sill with
his fingers.
It was not easy to pull himself up, and, if he had not been in good
physical training, he never could have accomplished the feat. As it
was, he was up and peering through the open window in a few seconds.
To lower himself inside was the work of another ten or fifteen moments.
The door of the pantry—for a pantry it was—had not been fastened, and
he was in the lower hall, making for the stairs, while a slower man
might have been trying to work his way through the window opening.
Up the kitchen stairs and into the main hall he rushed. There were some
complicated bolts and locks on the front door, and it took him some
time to overcome them. What was worse, he could not do it without noise.
Potter had a vision of a man in pajamas suddenly appearing at the top
of the stairs on the second flight, with a lamp in one hand and a
pistol in the other.
“Who’s that?” squeaked the man, evidently frightened out of his senses.
“Hands up, or I’ll fire!”
But T. Burton Potter had the door open by this time.
“Fire and be blowed!”
He yelled this back defiantly as he rushed out and slammed the door
behind him.
“I’m glad the fool didn’t fire, all the same,” muttered Potter. “It
would have made racket enough to bring the policeman on post, anyhow,
and I don’t want to see any of those gentry until I’ve had time to
compose myself. Whew! I wish I were in good old New York.”
He walked leisurely along when he had turned the corner, for he knew
that a running man, or even one walking swiftly, might be questioned
by the first policeman he met.
“I don’t see anybody about. Just as well. I’ll get down to the
ferryhouse and slip across. I hope there won’t be any one around there
who knows me. You never know where the police will put a man.”
T. Burton Potter was a slick individual, and he had the faculty of
seeing all around him without appearing to stare. But, smart as he was,
he did not perceive a man who had seen him come out of the house where
the person in pajamas had threatened to shoot, and who was following
him as closely as possible without being discovered.
“Gee! What luck! I knew he’d try to get through some of these houses if
he made a get-away,” muttered this individual.
It may be hardly necessary to remark that the individual was none other
than Patsy Garvan. It was, indeed, Nick Carter’s assistant.
He called it “luck” that he was on the trail of Potter when no one else
was. But it was really shrewdness, reënforced by patience.
Patsy had figured out that when the raid came, the men would scatter
in all directions if they could. The police would try to prevent this,
of course. But some of the gang were liable to slip through their net,
and it was Patsy’s opinion that, if any of them escaped, the slick T.
Burton Potter would be one of them.
While the chief and Chick were in the Northwest, Patsy had been on
another case, and had brought it to a successful issue. What this case
was does not matter. But it is interesting to know that, as he followed
it up, he got, just before the return of his chief and Chick, a side
glance at T. Burton Potter. He had had his own suspicions that the
rascal was mixed up in this counterfeiting affair.
Potter walked swiftly toward the river, but before he reached the
ferryhouse he resolved that it would be too risky for him to cross the
water that way, and he plunged into a district with which he was fairly
well familiar, down among the wharves, to see if he could hire a boat
without making anybody suspicious.
Nick had been quite right in his belief that Patsy had managed to
pass himself off as the owner of the yawl in which he and Potter were
rowing. That was exactly what he had done.
As they neared the place on the Manhattan side where Patsy had decided
to land, Potter paid him the dollar he demanded for rowing him across,
and darted out of sight while Patsy was putting the money in his pocket.
Patsy grinned, as he leaped upon the wharf right on the heels of his
late passenger, and, after hiding behind some freight till Potter
walked away, followed him until he had reached the street.
Then followed a chase through the tortuous streets of lower New York,
until T. Burton Potter rushed up a stairway to the elevated road at
South Ferry. Patsy was not far behind him—so near, in fact, that he
contrived to be on the same Sixth Avenue train that carried Potter
uptown to Eighth Street.
At this station Potter got off, and Patsy, who had been in the next
car, also dropped off and hid himself in the shadows until Potter went
down the stairs.
In less than half an hour Patsy rapped at the door of Nick Carter’s
library and walked in, cool and collected, to find his chief busy with
some papers at his big table, and alone.
Nick looked up calmly.
“I was expecting you, Patsy,” he said.
“I came as soon as I could,” was Patsy’s response.
“Where’s your man?”
“My man?”
“T. Burton Potter.”
Patsy could not help showing surprise in his look and tone, and Nick
regarded him imperturbably.
“How did you know, chief?”
“That doesn’t matter. Where is he?”
“I’ll take you to him if you like. But you’ll have to break into a
house.”
“Very well. We’ll break in,” answered Nick, as if the act of burglary
were a matter of everyday experience. “Tell Chick. I’ve sent him to his
room to lie down for a while. He’ll have a very short rest, from the
look of things.”