PATSY’S STILL-HUNT.
“I believe I’ve found him,” was the assertion with which Patsy Garvan
greeted Nick Carter, as he opened the door of his own library. “I’ve
heard of a chink with a sore mudhook and a listener branded from the top
edge down to the flap where you’d hang an earring, if you wore such a
thing.”
Patsy jumped from behind Nick’s desk as the detective and Chick entered
the room, and it was obvious that the enthusiastic second assistant had
been about to write a report for his chief when he was interrupted.
He had thrown his hat on a chair, taken off his coat, rolled up his
shirt sleeves, and thrust the fingers of his left hand through his hair,
as a preparation for literary labor. Writing was one of the occupations
that he seldom took up by choice.
“Where is he, Patsy?” asked Nick, as he took the chair the young fellow
had vacated. “Can you produce him?”
“Sure I can,” replied Patsy. “That is, after we’ve laid out three or
four other chinks who’ll maybe stick in the way.”
“In Chinatown?” asked Chick.
“Naw!” was Patsy’s scornful reply. “That isn’t any place to look for a
chink who’s traveling on the ragged edge of the law. That’s where you’d
naturally look for him, and he wouldn’t be a chink if he didn’t have
cunning enough to be somewhere else. Gee! They’re a wise bunch, and
don’t you forget it. Why, I----”
“Where did you find him?” interrupted Nick. “Get down to business.”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” returned Patsy, in a half-apologetic tone. “When
I went out of the house to-night, to look for this chink, I didn’t know
where to go. It wasn’t likely he’d be down near Mott or Doyers or Pell
Street. Those are Chinatown, of course, and there are more chinks to the
square yard around there than you’d find in square miles anywhere else
in New York.”
“That’s so,” commented Chick.
“Of course, it’s so. Everybody knows that. Also, there was a possibility
that this crooked-eyed geezer might be there. But I didn’t think so. The
question was, where should I look? I know a lot of chink laundries in
Greater New York, and some more over in Jersey City. But it would take
me a week to look into them all, and I wouldn’t be sure of landing my
man, at that.”
“Great Scott! Why don’t you tell your yarn right off the bat, Patsy?”
begged Chick. “Where is this Chinaman?”
“I’m coming to that, Chick. Don’t be in such a hustle. When I’d walked
around for a while, thinking it over, I found myself back in front of
our house.”
“Yes?”
“I was on the other side of the avenue, in the shadow, when I saw two
men come out of this house.”
“You did?” shouted Chick. “Did you know them? Who were they? Why didn’t
you say so at first?”
“Of course, I knew them,” replied Patsy, to Chick’s first query. “They
were the chief and you.”
Chick snorted in disgust, while Nick Carter laughed, for he had
suspected what Patsy would say.
“What did you do then?” asked Nick.
“I followed your taxi in another one that I picked up on Thirty-fourth
Street, and I told him to keep yours in sight. It took me to Andrew
Anderton’s house.
“When I saw you and Chick go in, I paid off my taxi driver and told him
to beat it. Then I took up my post on the other side of the avenue and
watched. You see, you’d told me that it was the Yellow Tong that had
laid out Mr. Anderton, and I know the ways of chinks.”
“Go on.”
“You hadn’t been in there more than a minute before a chink came
strolling past the house, and he met another one at the corner. Then two
more came, and two more after that. They did not all stay in a bunch,
but I saw them all speak to each other.”
“What about the man with the scar that the chief wants?” put in Chick.
“I’m coming to that. The chinks were all watching the Anderton house in
a casual kind of way, but all at once I found two of them were missing.
What was funny about that was that they did not walk away. I saw the
whole six in front of the house at one moment, and the next, when I went
to count them, there were only four.”
“What had become of the other two?”
“I don’t know. But that wasn’t all of it. While I was wondering where
they had gone, I’m a chink myself if two more didn’t vanish the same
way.”
“But they must have gone somewhere,” interposed Nick Carter impatiently.
“They weren’t swallowed up by the sidewalk.”
“That’s what they seemed to be,” insisted Patsy. “However, I wasn’t
going to stand anything like that without trying to call the bluff. So I
walked down the avenue for a block, under the trees, against the park
fence, and then crossed over. I came moseying along past Anderton’s, and
there was my two Mr. Chinks.”
“What were they doing?”
“Just coming slowly along, chattering to each other. I don’t know much
chink lingo, but I’m on to some of their words, and I heard one of them
say he’d had another fight. The other one asked him what about. Then
came something I couldn’t make out, but I caught the chink word for
smoothing iron.”
“Yes?”
“Just then they came into the light of an arc lamp, and I got a flash at
the ear of the one who said he’d been in a fight. I saw the white scar.
At once I piped off his right hand, and I saw that he had a finger tied
up in a white rag. That was enough. I kept right on past them, as if I
wasn’t interested. But I knew they were suspicious.”
“What did they do?”
“They waited till I’d got to the corner, where I turned around. I know
that part of the avenue pretty well, and I made for a vacant lot with
boards built up around it. There’s one loose board that I’d noticed when
I was past there last week, and it had struck me then that it would be
handy if a fellow happened to want to hide.”
“That’s right, Patsy!” commended Nick. “A good detective is always
careful to take note of everything. The most unimportant things--or
things that seem unimportant--may mean a great deal at some other time.”
“Exactly the way I’d figured it,” said Patsy, his freckled face flushing
with pleasure at his chief’s words. “And it just hit the spot to-night.
I slipped through the hole--just wide enough for me to squeeze
through--and pulled the board back into place.”
“It’s a good job you’re slim, Patsy,” smiled Nick.
“Yes. That’s been a help to me many times. Anyhow, as I was going to
say, I hadn’t more than got behind the boards, when the chinks came to
the corner and peeked around. There’s a big arc light there, you know,
so that I could see them quite plainly. They waited a minute, and then
they walked past the place where I was, and hustled around into Madison
Avenue. I was out of the hole and at the corner just as they boarded a
street car.”
“Did you get on the same car?” asked Chick.
Patsy shook his head emphatically.
“Not me, Chick. I was too wise for that. But luck was with me, for
another car came along, close behind the other. There had been a
blockade downtown, and there was a string of five or six cars in a row.”
“Well?” put in Nick.
“There was nothing to it after that,” replied Patsy, grinning. “The
chinks got off at Hundred and Twenty-fifth and walked east. I was a
block behind them. They turned the corner when they got to Third Avenue,
and then another corner. I landed them at last. They went into a chink
laundry that was all dark. One of them knocked at the door. It was
opened right away. I guess there was a peephole. But after a while the
door swung back and the two went in.”
“And that was all?”
“Not quite. I hung around for a while, and, sure enough, four other
Chinamen came and got in. I couldn’t see whether they were the same four
I’d been watching on Fifth Avenue, and who got away from me, but it’s a
gold watch to a rusty nail that they were.”
“You know just where this laundry is, of course?” asked Nick.
“Gee! Yes. I can lead you right to it. But there’s a little more I
haven’t told you yet. I thought, if I hung around for a while, I might
find out something else. So I crossed the street, a little way below the
laundry. Then I came back and got into a doorway right opposite. I
hadn’t been there more than two minutes, when a taxicab came up and a
tall man got out. I got only a glimpse of him. He had a long black coat
and soft hat, and he wore spectacles with big black rims.”
Nick Carter betrayed the first excitement that had marked him since
Patsy began to tell his story.
“Was he a Chinaman or a Japanese, Patsy?” he asked eagerly.
“Search me. I couldn’t see in the dark.”
“Where did he go?”
“Into the laundry. The door opened as soon as the taxi stopped. There
wasn’t any waiting for him. It was all done up in a flash. He’d gone in
and the taxi was on its way in less time than you could take off your
hat. I did not stay any longer. I thought I’d seen enough. I jumped an
elevated train and came home. The name on the sign over the laundry was
‘Sun Jin.’”
“That will do,” said Nick Carter shortly. “We’ll all go to bed. In the
morning we’ll go after the man with the scar on his ear and the rag on
his finger.”