CHICK CARTER’S QUEST.
There were reasons, of course, for the swift sequence of sensational
episodes of that morning, as there are reasons why the maelstrom so
fiercely swirls on certain tides. There is always turbulence and
violence when strong tides meet.
It was after nine o’clock when Chick Carter approached the rented home
of the Baron Esterveldt and his wife, as well as the beautiful snake who
was posing as their orphan relative.
It was, as Garland had said to Nick, a most attractive place. A stately
stone residence well in from the street, with an environment of
beautiful grounds, shaded with fine old trees and adorned with
ornamental shrubbery. Rounded and perfectly kept driveways led to a
stable and a commodious garage, beyond which a stone wall divided the
estate from a rear street.
Chick turned his steps in that direction after sauntering by the front
of the house, taking the opposite side of the fashionable street. He
could see no one at any of the windows, many of which were partly open
for ventilation at that hour of the morning.
Upon entering the back street, however, where the wall and considerable
intervening shrubbery served to conceal him, he obtained a good view of
the back of the house, and he then discovered the two persons he was
chiefly seeking.
The sunshine lay warm and bright on a broad rear veranda. In one of
several large willow chairs was seated the massive, bearded man whom
Nick had seen in the restaurant the previous night, and afterward
described to his assistants. He was reading a morning newspaper.
Walking to and fro as if for exercise, Irma Valaska also was plainly
seen, with her hands clasped behind her and her graceful, sinuous figure
clad in a close-fitting blue street costume. Madame Valaska always made
it a point to be prepared for the street at a moment’s notice. It was
the precaution of conscious peril.
“By Jove, there they are,” thought Chick, when his gaze fell upon them.
“That big fellow must be the Baron Esterveldt. There’s no question as to
the identity of the woman. If anything comes off here this morning, it’s
a safe gamble that one or both of them will figure in it. Having got my
eye on them, therefore, I’ll find a concealment from which I can safely
watch them.”
Chick did not find it difficult to do so. Cautiously scaling the wall
near one corner of the rear grounds, he found a shelter back of a thick
hedge dividing the estate from that adjoining it, a point enabling him
to easily see the house and the entire rear grounds.
“Now, by Jove, I’m ready for whatever turns up,” he said to himself. “If
Nick is right, and it’s long odds that he is not far from the truth,
there ought to be something doing this morning.”
Nearly two hours passed, however, before his vigil was rewarded.
The Baron Esterveldt had, in the meantime, finished reading his
newspaper. He lingered briefly to talk with his companion, then arose
ponderously and entered the house.
Chick was too far away to hear anything that passed between them, but
their earnestness during the brief conversation convinced him that they
were anxious and apprehensive.
Left alone on the veranda, Irma Valaska took the chair the man had
vacated and began to read the newspaper he had left for her.
Something like a quarter hour passed and then the ball began rolling in
earnest.
Glancing toward the back street, Chick discovered a man moving
cautiously near the wall, pausing at intervals to gaze over it in the
direction of the house, and acting in a way much too suspicious to be
disregarded.
This man was, as may be inferred, Larry Trent.
Chick changed his position slightly in order to watch him.
Presently Trent arrived at a point nearly back of the garage, and he
then discovered the woman seated on the veranda. He at once leaped over
the wall and darted behind the garage, from which nearer point he gazed
out at her.
“The game is opening, all right,” thought Chick, who was some fifty
yards from the garage, that being on the opposite side of the grounds.
“But who the deuce is the fellow? He appears to know the woman by sight,
at least, yet fears for some reason to approach her. By Jove, he may be
one of the crooks who assaulted Dillon and got away with the portfolio.
He may have seen Irma Valaska in the touring car that evening, and in
other respects a stranger to her.”
This was confirmed almost within a moment, and it gave Chick a further
hint at what may be in the wind.
Larry Trent stepped out from a rear corner of the garage and whistled to
the woman.
Irma Valaska looked up quickly and saw him. She dropped her paper,
gazing curiously at him, and Trent beckoned for her to join him.
The woman hesitated only for a moment. She seemed to anticipate why she
was wanted. She threw aside the newspaper, then hurried down the veranda
stairs and out over the driveway.
Chick Carter then saw plainly that they met like strangers.
For about five minutes they stood talking with intense earnestness,
Trent doing most of it and frequently pointing and gesticulating
emphatically, and all the while Irma Valaska listened with a steadily
deepening frown.
Suddenly they parted, and the woman ran back to the house.
Trent darted to the wall and hurried through the back street.
Chick Carter came to a quick decision--that he would follow the man.
What little he had seen convinced him that Trent was back of, or at
least directing, whatever business was to be done that morning.
Chick crept from his concealment, therefore, and within half a minute
was on the track of the man.
If he had waited about three minutes, he would have seen Irma Valaska
rush out to the garage again, from which she quickly sped away alone in
an electric runabout.
She had been warned in accord with the instructions of Andy Margate, and
she was away at top speed to confer with Captain Casper Dillon.
Upon stopping in front of this house, however, she became habitually
crafty and discreet. Instead of ringing the doorbell, she stole in over
the side path leading to the rear door and by the partly open French
window, at which she arrived just in time to hear the conclusion of Nick
Carter’s interview with Dillon, with the result already depicted.
Hardly a minute later, Tom Carney approached the house, bent upon
warning Dillon, as Trent already had warned Irma Valaska. Carney saw the
runabout in front of the house. He became discreet, also, and crept into
the yard and nearly to the French window.
Turning a near corner three minutes later, still in pursuit of Larry
Trent, Chick Carter saw the two men meet in front of the house. He drew
back and watched them. He saw the runabout, but he had no reason to
suppose that it had brought Irma Valaska to the house, nor did he then
know that it was where Captain Dillon lived, or that Nick might be
there.
Trent and Carney talked in earnest whispers for several moments, then
both hurried away.
Chick’s suspicions were redoubled, and he now proceeded to shadow both.
The two men proceeded posthaste to the dwelling in which they had left
Andy Margate and Patsy Garvan.
Chick paused in the narrow street after they had disappeared into the
court, and began to size up the inferior house and its surroundings. He
wondered why they had come there. He decided to get a look at the rear
of the house, but he did not steal into the court, as Patsy had done.
Instead, he entered an adjoining yard, that of an express stable, and he
scarce had passed back of the fence dividing it from the dwelling, when
he heard the voices of the men just leaving the house.
Quickly peering through a crack in the board fence, moreover, he saw
Andy Margate and recognized him.
Margate was speaking in his characteristic cold and confident fashion
while the three men passed out of the rear yard and through the alley.
“There’ll be time enough, if the woman has held him up and Dillon got
the bracelets on him,” he was saying, every word of which was plainly
heard by the listening detective. “We can make a deal with them and get
a good bit of coin, and then we’ll bolt for other parts. I have fixed
that whelp in the kitchen so that he can’t escape and queer our game.
He’ll stay till we return, and----”
Chick Carter could hear no more, nor needed to hear more. He knew well
enough, now, at whose house the runabout had stopped, whom it had
brought there, and what probably had occurred.
Chick knew, too, knowing what Patsy’s mission had been that morning, to
what whelp Andy Margate had referred.
Chick waited only until the three men had vanished down the street, and
he then clambered over the fence and into the yard back of the house.
He did not stand upon ceremony after having assured himself with a few
swift glances that the house was deserted--barring its one captive
occupant. He beat out a pane of one of the kitchen windows with his
revolver, then entered the room and--found Patsy Garvan, gagged and
bound, hand and foot, on the floor of a small closet.
Though their meeting was an exultant one, and Patsy’s surprise all that
may be imagined, they spent but little time in congratulations. A very
few words, moreover, told each what had been learned by the other, as
well as how the situation then stood.
“Gee! there’s nothing to it,” said Patsy finally. “We can reach Dillon’s
house nearly as quickly as those three fellows. We can nail the entire
gang.”
“Stop a bit,” Chick objected. “If they are going to attempt making a
deal with Dillon and the woman, there will be time enough for us.”
“Time for what?” questioned Patsy.
“Time to search this house,” said Chick. “It evidently is where the
crooks have been quartered. We may find what we want.”