CUNNING FOES.
That evening, while Chick sat in comfort on the north porch at the
Maynard house, strong in the belief that his chief had gone to New York
in quest of a murderer and thief who was then in that house, Nick was
standing in front of a small, mean-looking store near Chatham Square.
There was a pawnbroker’s sign over the door, and diamonds were shown in
the windows in goodly quantities. On the door itself, the top half of
which was of glass, was the line: “Diamonds bought and sold.” Below was
the one word: “Hartley.”
The detective had reached the city at three o’clock, and at once “made
up” for an inspection of the diamond merchant’s place of business.
Standing across the street, Nick had the appearance of a sailor having
a leave of absence and a desire to observe all that was worth seeing in
the city.
Presently Nick went into the store and stood by the front counter,
which was covered with show cases, each containing diamonds of all
sizes and shades. The salesman who came forward to wait upon him
leaned on one of the cases carelessly, and looked only casually at the
pretended sailor.
“I wants to sell me di’mond,” said Nick.
“Let’s see it, mate.”
Nick took from his pocket a superb stone worth fully $500. It was
finely cut and had been removed from its setting. In fact, it was a
stone which the detective frequently wore.
“’Ow much for it?” he asked.
“Where did you get it?” asked the clerk.
Nick gave an impatient hitch to his breeches.
“This hain’t no bloomin’ police station, is it?” he asked.
“No,” was the reply, “but we like to know where the goods we buy come
from.”
Nick put the stone back into his pocket and moved toward the door.
“Wait,” said the clerk. “How much do you want for it?”
“Four ’undred,” was the short reply.
“I’ll give you fifty dollars,” said the clerk.
Nick went back and began to haggle with the clerk. What he wanted was
to keep in the store long enough to size it up thoroughly. Besides, he
had a notion that the two men who had been described as smelling of
rum, and talking like London, might pay their respects to the diamond
merchant.
Now and then during the conversation Nick walked to the front door and
looked out into the street. Just across the way, Patsy, next to Chick,
his best assistant, stood in a make-up similar to that worn by his
chief.
Nick had an idea that the two sailors, who were evidently unused to the
ways of New York crooks, would loiter about Hartley’s place.
Patsy was watching in the street for the reason that the men might
visit the vicinity of the diamond shop without actually going in. If
they came within sight, he was to motion to Nick if it were possible to
make him see, through the crowd; and if not, he was to go to the store
after him.
But it was not necessary for Patsy to signal to Nick or to call him
from the store. As the chief approached the door, after being in
the establishment for some time, he saw two men resembling the ones
he sought standing in front of the store. They were talking together
earnestly, making quick gestures with their hands.
Nick passed out into the street and halted near them. One of the men
looked the detective over and approached him, pushing pedestrians aside
like a man in the fighting stage of intoxication.
“’Ello, shipmate,” he said, laying a hand heavily on Nick’s shoulder.
“Doin’ biz with that bloomin’ shark?”
“’E won’t buy,” replied Nick. “’E wants the bloomin’ earth, ’e does.”
“’E’s a shark, a’ Hindian Hocean shark,” roared the sailor. “’E’s got
to take a broadside from me the day.”
“You ain’t out on no bloomin’ desert island now,” said Nick. “You’ll
get in irons, that’s what you’ll get, if you lay alongside of that
pirate here. Offered me fifty dollars for a five-hundred-dollar
diamond, that’s wot ’e did, blast ’im.”
Patsy came up at this moment, and the four wandered away to a drinking
place on the Bowery, and sat down at a table. Nick was by no means
certain that the men he was with were the ones he sought.
They drank rum liberally at Nick’s expense, but did not appear to get
much the worse for their libations. They cursed Hartley from keel to
topmast, as one of them expressed it, but refused to mention the cause
of their hatred.
“You’re from Lonnon,” Nick said, after a time. “’Ow is the old town?”
Nick knew London like a book, and his reference to the music halls and
sailor resorts set the men to talking.
“We’re goin’ back when we gets brass enough,” one of them said. “We’ve
come over ’ere on a bloomin’ cruise after the wind on the tops of the
tall buildings, that’s wot we has, mate.”
One of the men sprang to his feet.
“Hi’m goin’ after ’im,” he said.
“You’re drunk,” said the other. “Let ’im alone.”
“Hif you’re afraid to go, Hi goes halone,” was the reply.
“I’ll go with you to see the shark,” said Nick.
The sailor seized Nick’s hand and almost dragged him to the door.
“We’ll board the bloomin’ pirate,” he said.
The detective began to think that he had made no mistake in figuring on
the movements of the two strange men.
“This man is drunk,” he thought, “but not so drunk as he pretends
to be. He has probably nerved himself with liquor for an unpleasant
interview. If he is the man I suspect him to be, the fact is likely to
come out in the talk between the merchant and himself. If he is not one
of the sailors who appeared at the Maynard house yesterday, I shall
soon know that.”
The detective was now in a section of New York where the life of a man
known to be in quest of lawbreakers is hardly safe. The lawless ones
of the great city often make that section their home when pursued by
officers of the law, and will defend each other to the death.
The establishment of the diamond merchant was ostensibly respectable,
but there were in police records accounts of men and women who had
entered the half-glazed door possessed of valuable gems and had never
returned to their former haunts. Nick knew that the outlaws of New York
boasted that there were hidden cellars and secret rooms and stairways
in the buildings of that quarter which no officer had ever been able to
discover.
The sailor entered the store and advanced toward the rear, which was
dimly lighted by a yellow jet of gas, the daylight which came through
the dusty glass in front not penetrating into the back of the long
room. There, on a high stool at a standing desk, bent over the pages of
a great book of accounts, was a man with iron-gray hair and stooping
shoulders. He glanced up as the two men approached, and Nick made a
mental note of the keenest black eyes he had ever seen under a mass of
gray hair.
The sailor stepped up to the desk and laid his arm insolently on a pile
of books at the merchant’s elbow. Then he steadied himself and glared
at the figure before him.
“You are here again, are you?” asked the merchant impatiently. “I told
you to keep away from here.”
“You know wot I come for,” said the sailor sullenly.
“Who is that with you?” demanded the diamond merchant suspiciously.
“A mate I picked hup out ’ere.”
“If your mate has influence with you,” said the merchant, “I advise him
to use it in getting you aboard ship as soon as possible.”
“Hartley is playing a bold game,” thought Nick.
“’And hout hour coin, then,” said the sailor, “an’ we’ll go soon
enough.”
“We have had enough of this,” said Hartley. “You must cease to
persecute me or take the consequences. However, this is no matter to
discuss before a third party. Come with me, and you, matey, remain
where you are.”
Hartley moved toward a rear door, accompanied by the sailor, and Nick
stepped back to a chair which stood at the end of the counter, hidden
from the front by a stack of boxes and books. The clerk in front walked
back and saw that the detective was in the chair, and returned to the
front, seemingly to watch through the door for customers.
The thing for Nick to do now was to listen to the conversation which
was to take place between the men who had just left him. But how? There
were two doors opening from the room to the rear. One was at about the
middle of the store, and the other was close to the wall at the left,
and about opposite the chair in which Nick sat.
Hartley and the sailor had passed through the centre door, so this
probably led to another room. The other door, being near the wall,
undoubtedly led to a hallway running to the rear of the building. Nick
resolved to investigate. Seeing that his weapons were handy, he moved
toward the side door, being careful to keep below the top of the long
desk.
The clerk was apparently busy in front, and did not hear the door open,
as Nick supposed, and so the detective stepped into a dark passage and
prepared to bring his flash into use. Then, before he could take the
lantern from his pocket, he heard a sharp click, like the movement of a
metallic spring, and dropped into the darkness.
The floor had fallen away beneath his feet, and he was sliding down a
well of a place which seemed scores of feet deep and just large enough
in diameter to permit the passage of his body. It was the old trick of
lower New York, which had been worked thousands of times, and will be
worked as many times more.
Nick, who had been up against the trapdoor game before, would naturally
have been more careful in that treacherous establishment only for the
fact that he believed his disguise perfect, and Hartley rather above
the murder of inquisitive men whom he had had no occasion to suspect of
greater interference with his plans than the opening of a door for the
purpose of listening to a forbidden conversation.
As Nick dropped into the dark tunnel, he heard a trapdoor close above
his head, and at the same instant his right heel caught in what seemed
to be little more than a horizontal crevice in the wall of the place.
At the moment of falling he had crowded his feet out to the sides and
his hands to the front, in hope of finding some break to check his
fall.
Finding that his heel was slipping from the place where it rested, Nick
drew out his knife, which opened as he removed it from his pocket, the
blade being controlled by a spring at the back, and drove it into the
wall to his left. Supported by this and by the foothold on the right,
the detective began an investigation of the place.
He could have used his lantern readily enough, as the right hand was
free, but he was afraid of watching eyes, so he groped about in the
darkness, hoping to find an outlet about where his heel had struck.
He understood the trap games of New York well enough to know that the
shaft communicated with more than one basement of the building, which
was an old one and probably full of devices for the destruction of
unwelcome guests. If he could come upon a door connecting with the
floor directly underneath the store, the trick of the diamond merchant
might, after all, be turned to good advantage.
A careful examination of the wall on the right convinced the detective
that the door to the first basement was where his foot had struck;
that, in fact, his heel rested on a bit of flooring under the crack of
the door.
“Now,” he thought, “I wonder which way this door opens? If they throw
people down here, it opens into the room; if they back people up
against the wall and let them fall in, it opens into the shaft! Ah!
Here it is.”
The door gave way under the pressure of Nick’s foot, and a faint light
crept into the shaft. There was a light at the front of the first
basement, and men were there engaged in unpacking boxes.
It was no easy matter for Nick to change his position so as to pass
through the doorway, but he succeeded at last, and stood in the shadows
cast by the flaring gas jet in front. He knew that those at work could
not see him, so he moved about with considerable confidence.
The basement was used for storing, and packing and unpacking, goods
of many kinds. At the back, where Nick stood, it was well-nigh filled
with boxes of various sizes. At the right of the basement, facing from
the front, was a stairway running to the store floor above. This,
the detective thought, might lead to the rear room where the talk
between the diamond merchant and the sailor was in progress. He mounted
the steps halfway and paused, listening for the sound of voices. As
he waited, he thought with wonder at the position in which he found
himself.
That a New York merchant of the apparent respectability of Hartley
should occupy a place of business set with a man trap of the character
which had caught him was incredible enough, but that he should actually
bring it into use was almost beyond belief. It meant much to the
detective. It showed him that the establishment was one in which such
devices were considered necessary to the business of the proprietor,
and therefore one which should be broken up by the police. It was
almost incredible that such a den should exist within a few blocks of
Broadway.
Presently the sound of voices came to the ears of the listening
detective. First he heard the smooth tones of the merchant saying:
“You have betrayed me, and you cannot deceive me again. The best thing
you can do is to leave the country, and leave it at once.”
“’Ow can we get hoff without th’ coin? Tell me that!” answered the
voice of the sailor. “Hi’ll split on the game if we don’t get hour
hown.”
“What have you done with the diamonds?” demanded the merchant.
Nick bent forward eagerly.
At last his quest was to be crowned with results.
What diamonds could be meant save the ones stolen from the Maynard home?
“Hi gave them to the bloomin’ toff you sent hup there,” was the angry
reply.
“That is not true,” said the merchant. “You gave him a counterfeit
package, and stood by while he packed it in the trunk and checked the
trunk. From the moment the trunk was closed in your presence it was
never opened again until it was brought here. You stole the diamonds,
and now you try to blackmail me.”
“This is something like!” thought Nick. “The diamonds were placed in
the trunk, as I supposed, and shipped here. Hartley says he never
received them. Sailor says he delivered them to the agent. Now, which
one lies, and where are the diamonds?”
“Hit’s a lie!” shouted the sailor. “Your bloomin’ pirate got the gems.”
“You talk of splitting on the game,” continued the merchant. “What do
you know of the murder which took place at the Maynard house on the
night of your visit there?”
“That’s gaff!”
“Gaff, is it?” demanded Hartley. “Read the newspapers when you go out
and see if I speak the truth. Maynard was murdered in his bed on the
night you secured the diamonds. You’ll both find yourselves in the
electric chair if you say too much about the affair.”
“S’lp me!” cried the sailor, “Hi don’t know of any murder. Hi——”
The merchant interrupted him.
“I don’t want to know anything about it,” he said. “I merely repeat my
former advice, which is to get out of the country.”
Nick waited in vain for the sailor to go on. What words were on his
tongue when so suddenly checked? He made general denial. Who, then,
had murdered Alvin Maynard? Where were the diamonds?
Nick was listening to the voice of one of the men who had stolen the
gems, yet he was no nearer a solution of the murder mystery than
before. He believed what the man said regarding the murder. He had not
even known of it until informed by the merchant. Even now he seemed to
doubt the truth of the statement.
“I’ll land him in the Tombs when he leaves here,” thought Nick, “and
we’ll see about the murder later. It is possible that, after all, he
knows where the diamonds are, and yet, men of his character don’t
usually hang about for a little money when in the possession of half a
million in diamonds.”
But Nick’s plans were defeated by something which happened on the floor
above. He heard a quick blow, a fall, and then the groans of a man in
agony. As he was about to spring up the stairs and through the door at
the top, the sound of another voice came to his ears:
“How was that for a knockout?”
It was the coarse voice of a bully.
“Very well done,” replied the merchant. “Put him in the shaft with his
mate.”
“Croak him?” asked the other.
“No; fix him up so that he won’t know his own name when he is able to
be about again,” was the reply.