CHICK MAKES DISCOVERIES.
It was not a wise thing for Chick to do, of course. But that same
excessive enthusiasm which had induced him to come here, on his own
responsibility, instead of going to bed, as he had been told to do by
his chief, made him indiscreet now.
That he had the man whom Nick Carter had told Patsy to find, he was
sure. But whether the Chinaman had killed Andrew Anderton or not was a
question he could not answer positively.
“I don’t doubt it,” he thought. “Anyhow, what is he doing up in this
room at this time in the morning? I’ll lay him out on general
principles.”
It is pretty certain that Chick would have carried out this purpose if
he had had only the Chinaman to deal with. But there was an
interruption. He had the fellow by the throat and was cheerfully
throttling him, when a heavy weight came down on the back of his head.
He knew no more.
When Chick came to himself again, there were thin, white threads of
light stealing into the room between the slightly parted window
curtains. Daylight had come.
“Fool!” was Chick’s first articulate utterance.
The epithet was not applied to the man who had knocked him down, or the
Chinaman with whom he had been struggling when the blow came, either. He
was calling himself a fool.
“The chief is always telling me not to fly off the handle,” he
continued, in a mumbling whisper. “And I’m always doing it. What chance
had I when that tall old fraud was right behind me? As soon as I tackled
the chink, of course, Mr. Professor let me have it with a sandbag.”
Chick was sitting up on the floor by this time, and as he felt his head
without finding any cut or bruise, he knew that he had been
sandbagged--for the second time within a few hours.
“That’s what I was hit with,” he decided judicially. “It is the favorite
tool of the Yellow Tong. We knew that before, because two or three
people have been laid out that way when some of the tong men were
supposed to have done it. Even that poor Brand Jamieson, who got the
crossed needles, too, was slammed with a sandbag first of all.”
Chick’s head cleared in the course of a few minutes, and he was able to
review the situation in some sort of orderly fashion.
“After all,” he reflected, “it isn’t so bad. The chief wanted to find
that fellow with the scarred ear and burned finger. Now I know where he
hails from, because Patsy gave us a tip. Patsy knew the name over that
laundry was Sun Jin, and that’s what I heard the Jap call the chink I
had on the floor. It all fits together like an easy jigsaw puzzle.”
The blow on his head had made Chick feel a little sick, but he was able
to get to his feet. When he had opened the study door, the fresher air
of the hallways revived him.
He looked at his watch and found that it was five o’clock. There was no
sign or sound of activity in the house. He made his way down the stairs
and out to the avenue, without seeing anybody.
“That butler, Ruggins, was just about all in, I reckon,” he thought. “He
didn’t care who was in the house, or what was going on, so long as he
was not bothered. Well, I guess I’ll get home, report to the chief, and
then turn in myself. I know he won’t let me do anything more till I’ve
had some sleep. I hope he won’t call me down too hard for what I’ve
done. I’ve found out something, anyhow.”
Chick intended to take a Madison Avenue car, as the easiest way to get
downtown. So he turned off the avenue to a cross street, to wait for a
car at the corner.
But he didn’t have to take a car. To his intense satisfaction a taxi
came crawling up behind him, at the leisurely pace which suggested that
it had no fare inside. This was confirmed by a husky voice singing out,
“Taxi?”
It was the chauffeur of the taxicab. He pulled the machine over to the
curb, as he waved one hand to his possible patron, while the other
controlled the steering wheel.
“Yes. All right!” responded Chick.
The chauffeur was enveloped in a great, hairy coat, and a cap of the
same kind of fur was pulled well down over his face. The weather was not
cold in the daytime, for it was early fall, but at night one can get
pretty chilly driving a cab for hours at a stretch, and no doubt the
heavy coat was comfortable between five and six in the morning.
“Take me down to Thirty-fourth Street and Madison,” directed Chick.
“Then I’ll show you the house I want.”
It was one of Nick Carter’s precautions--which he also advised his
assistants to observe--not to mention his address to strangers. It was
better, he held, to get near the house, and then point it out to anybody
to whom it was necessary to show it.
“All right,” grunted the chauffeur. “Can you open the door yourself? You
don’t want me to get down, do you?”
“Of course not. I’m able to get into a cab without help,” replied Chick,
with a smile.
“It opens a little hard,” said the cabman.
The taxi was in front of the vacant lot, with the high board fence
around it, to which reference has been made in a former chapter. It was
a lonesome spot, especially at that hour in the day.
Chick found that the door of the taxicab did indeed open hard. He could
not turn the handle at first, and when he did accomplish this, it was
with considerable difficulty that he got the door to open.
“Sticks like thunder!” he ejaculated, as he tugged at the handle. “What
the deuce do you have your door so----”
That was all he had a chance to say. When the door did at last yield to
his violent pull, four hands seized him by the head and shoulders, and
he was dragged inside with a jerk. Then the door slammed shut, and he
felt the cab whirling and rocking away, as three men held him firmly on
the floor.
He was able to see that there were thick shades drawn down on both sides
of the cab, so that no one could see in from the street.
If Chick had any idea of calling for help, that was soon put beyond his
power. A large cloth, which he believed was of silk, from its feel, was
bound tightly over his mouth and knotted at the back of his head.
A peculiar odor--that of opium--filled his nostrils. It would have told
him, if he had needed the information, that he was in the hands of
Chinamen. But he could see for himself, by the light that came to the
interior from the front window--through which he had a view of the
fur-clad chauffeur, calmly driving--that there were two Chinamen in
ordinary laundrymen’s garb, holding him, while a third man, with large,
tortoise-shell-framed spectacles covering part of his yellow face and a
slouch hat pulled so far down that it almost met the immense collar of
his overcoat, sat half behind him.
Chick tried to turn. He wanted to look straight at the man with the
spectacles. But the Chinamen gave him a quick wrench, to hold him away,
and one of them threatened him with a club that looked like a child’s
black stocking packed halfway up its length with sand.
There was nothing to be done just then but to submit, and Chick was
philosophical enough to make the best of a bad job. So he did not
struggle. He simply knelt on the floor of the cab, where he had been
originally put by his captors, and wondered how long it would be before
he could force his way to freedom.
He had too much faith in himself to believe that these rascals could
hold him very long. Besides, Patsy had traced this Professor Tolo to the
laundry of Sun Jin, and he and Nick Carter surely would be paying a
visit to that place very soon.
“This is the professor, behind those spectacles,” Chick told himself,
“and one of these chinks is the fellow with the scarred ear. I don’t
know the other one. Surely they can’t think they can get me without
having to pay for it.”
Then he thought of the crossed needles that would have killed him if
they had been driven a little farther into his sleeve, and he did not
feel so sure that the rascals would not go to extremes rather than be
caught themselves as the murderers of Andrew Anderton.
“But it isn’t only that,” went on Chick mentally. “They are after some
records made by Anderton. They seem to be of vital importance to the
tong. Well, we shall see.”
It was just as Chick came to this conclusion that the taxicab stopped
suddenly. At the same moment a large coat or cloak was thrown over his
head, and he felt his senses leaving him under the influence of a strong
narcotic, whose pungent odor gave him a sensation of horrible nausea.
He remained conscious long enough to realize that he was lifted out of
the cab and carried a few yards. Then he heard a door bang, and that was
all!