PATSY STRIKES A SNAG.
Patsy Garvan never did things by halves. Soon after six o’clock that
evening a dapper young man of remarkably inoffensive aspect, barring a
somewhat fierce upward twist of his mustache, which was also remarkable
in that it could be quickly transferred to his vest pocket--soon after
six o’clock this dapper young man entered the Hotel Westgate and
sauntered to the office inclosure.
Though it was a busy hour of the day and the subordinate clerks actively
engaged, Patsy quickly found an opportunity to speak to Vernon, to whom
he said quietly:
“Keep that same expression on your face, old top. A look of surprise
might be seen by some gink whom we least suspect. I’m Garvan, Nick
Carter’s assistant. Invite me into that cubbyhole back of the
bookkeeper’s desk. I want a bit of information from you.”
Vernon instantly grasped the situation. He nodded, while smiling and
shaking hands with Patsy over the counter.
“Step around to the end of the inclosure and I’ll let you in,” he
replied.
Patsy did so and was admitted, taking a chair back of the bookkeeper’s
high desk, which concealed him from view of persons outside of the
inclosure.
“By Jove, Garvan, I never would have recognized you,” Vernon then
laughed quietly. “What can I do for you?”
Patsy told him without stating why he wanted the information, but
cautioned him to say nothing about the matter.
“I can tell you in a very few minutes,” Vernon then said, more gravely.
“The ledger accounts will show just who has been here during the period
you mention, also just when they arrived. I will get it. We will look it
over together.”
“Go ahead,” nodded Patsy.
It required, as Vernon had said, only a few minutes to learn who had
been permanent guests in the hotel since the middle of August. The list
was not a long one. It contained only four names, in fact, though
thousands of transients had been coming and going during the same
interval.
“Permanent guests did not begin to flock in, you see, until the end of
the summer season,” Vernon explained.
“So much the better,” said Patsy. “This simplifies the matter. Two of
these guests are women. What do you know about them?”
“Both are wealthy widows,” said Vernon. “One is seventy years old, and
she has only a maid companion. The other has two daughters, who occupy
the same suite with her. Her rooms are on the ninth floor.”
“Any man living with either of them?”
“No.”
“I can safely drop them then, all right,” thought Patsy. “What about
this man Hanaford, of London?”
“He is an American representative of several big English woolen mills,”
said Vernon. “I have known him for a long time. He is about sixty years
old and is a man of unquestionable integrity.”
“What about the last, then?” questioned Patsy, assured as to the English
agent. “By Jove, he’s the man the chief saw in Mademoiselle Falloni’s
suite this morning--Doctor David Guelpa.”
“Yes, the same,” nodded Vernon. “I am not so sure about him.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Very little. In fact, Garvan, nothing positively reliable. He came here
on the fifth of September, as you see, with a valet named John Draper.”
“Two days after Clayton’s abduction and liberation,” thought Patsy, with
growing suspicion.
“He stated that he was a Hungarian physician, a throat specialist, and
that he might remain indefinitely in New York,” Vernon continued. “He
took an expensive suite, which he since has occupied with his valet, and
a few days later he opened offices in Fifth Avenue, which he still
retains. I don’t know how much business he does, Garvan, but seems to
have plenty of money.”
“Is a social man?”
“Not at all. He is very reserved.”
“What are his office hours? Is he usually here at eleven o’clock in the
morning?” asked Patsy, quick to suspect his presence in the hotel on
that particular morning.
“No, not ordinarily,” said Vernon. “He may have been detained this
morning.”
“It’s very obvious that he was here, all right,” Patsy said dryly. “Does
he have any mail?”
“No, none. I suppose it goes to his office.”
“Does he receive any visitors?”
“Very few. There are two men who occasionally come here to see him.”
“Do you know them?”
“No.”
“Where is his office?”
“Less than ten minutes’ walk from here,” said Vernon. “I will look up
the number for you.”
“Never mind it, Vernon, at present,” said Patsy, detaining him. “On what
floor is Doctor Guelpa’s suite?”
“The fourth.”
“Is it near the stairway, or elevator?”
“It adjoins the side stairway.”
“The one leading down to the corridor adjoining Clayton’s private
office?”
“Yes.”
“H’m, is that so?” Patsy muttered. “This looks very much as if I had hit
a promising trail.”
“You mean----”
“Never mind what I mean, Vernon, and be sure you don’t lisp a word of
this, nor look at Doctor Guelpa as if you had any distrust,” cautioned
Patsy. “Is his suite on the same floor as that of Mademoiselle Falloni?”
“Yes, and in the same corridor.”
“What’s the number?”
Vernon glanced at a schedule on the bookkeeper’s desk and quickly
informed him, Patsy mentally retaining the number.
“Have you seen Doctor Guelpa this evening?” he then inquired.
“Yes. He went in to dinner just before you entered. It’s not time for
him to come out.”
“Did Draper, the valet, come down with him?”
“I’m not sure. I saw Draper in the office just before Doctor Guelpa
showed up, however, and he may be at dinner.”
“I’ll mighty soon find out,” thought Patsy; then, aloud: “That’s all,
Vernon, and I’m vastly obliged. Mum’s the word, mind you.”
“Trust me, Garvan,” nodded the clerk.
Patsy thanked him again and departed. He had decided what course he
would shape. He knew that he could easily learn whether Doctor Guelpa,
or his valet, then was in the physician’s suite.
“If both are absent, by Jove, I’ll have a look at his rooms,” he said to
himself. “They may contain something worth seeing. It may be more than a
coincidence, by gracious, that he was a Charley on the spot this morning
and contrived to be in mademoiselle’s suite so soon after the robbery.
“He may, if my suspicions have feet to stand on, have been out to learn
what had been discovered, or was suspected, and what detectives were to
be employed.
“This looks too good to me to be dropped without looking deeper, and
I’ll snatch this opportunity for a peep at that sawbones’ rooms before
I phone the chief. A throat specialist, eh? I’ll have him by the throat
sooner or later, if I find I’m on the right track.”
Patsy was seeking the fourth floor while indulging in this hopeful train
of thought. He ignored the elevator and quickly mounted the several
stairways, and brought up at the door of Doctor Guelpa’s suite.
It then was half past six, and many of the guests had gone down to
dinner. The long, luxuriously carpeted corridor was quiet and deserted,
lighted only with an incandescent lamp here and there.
Patsy listened at the door for a moment. He could hear no sound from
within, nor detect any evidence of a light.
“It’s a hundred to one the sawbones is out,” he muttered. “I can woolly
eye that valet, all right, if he is here. I’ll pretend I’ve got a bad
throat, trouble in my pipes, and that I want to consult his jags from
Hungary. He’ll be a wise gazabo, all right, if I can’t fool him.”
Patsy was folding his handkerchief in the form of a bandage, which he
then fastened around his neck, turning up his coat collar, much as if
the advice and aid of a physician was really necessary. Putting on a
look of abject misery that would have deceived a clairvoyant, he then
knocked sharply on Doctor Guelpa’s door.
It brought no response from within.
Patsy listened intently, then knocked again, with the same negative
result.
“Gee! that’s good enough for me,” he muttered. “It’s a cinch that both
are out, and it’s me for the inside. I’ll make this door look like
thirty cents.”
Patsy had it unlocked and opened in less than thirty seconds, at all
events, and he then stepped into the entrance hall. A thick portière
across an inner door was closely drawn. The room beyond was in darkness.
Silence reigned in the gloomy suite.
Closing the hall door, Patsy groped his way to the other and found an
electric switch key on the wall near the casing. He turned it and a
flood of light revealed a handsomely furnished parlor, also the partly
open doors of two adjoining bedrooms.
He could see through one of them a broad bed, with other sleeping-room
furnishings, also two large trunks near one of the walls.
A roll-top desk in the parlor caught his eye. The cover was raised, and
he turned in that direction.
“I’ll see what that contains, for a starter,” thought Patsy. “’Twas very
good of him to leave it open. I’ll go through it like a shot through a
gun. The drawers first and then----”
Then, on the contrary, the hurried search he had begun abruptly ended.
The silence was broken by a threatening command from behind him, a voice
so curt and cold that no sane man would have ignored it.
“Cut that! Sit down in the chair, or you’ll drop on the floor in a
condition you’ll not fancy.”
Patsy, kneeling at the desk, one of the drawers of which he had pulled
open, swung round like a flash.
A tall, smoothly shaved, black-eyed man had stepped noiselessly from one
of the bedrooms. There was murder in his eyes, also in his right hand.
It held a revolver, aimed point-blank at the crouching detective.