CAUGHT IN A CORNER.
Patsy Garvan was hit with an idea, of course, when he started in hot
pursuit of the man in gray. He suddenly suspected, having seen him come
from the back door of Goulard’s private office, under the circumstances
already described, that this grizzly bearded fellow was none other than
Gaston Goulard himself.
Patsy realized, moreover, that the investigations he had made after the
suspect’s hurried departure, might prevent his overtaking him, and that
was the thought uppermost in Patsy’s mind when he plunged down the rear
stairway in pursuit of him.
He brought up in a paved court back of the vast building. It made in
from a side street, and was used chiefly for the receiving and shipping
of merchandise from the store. It adjoined the broad doors of the two
great basement rooms devoted to these branches of the vast business.
Several wagons and teamsters then were in the court, but there was no
sign of the man Patsy was seeking.
“He surely came this way,” he hurriedly reasoned. “He must have gone to
the side street, too, for the other end of the court brings up against a
wing of the building. I’ll take that chance.”
Patsy took it vainly, however, darting in that direction. He could not
discover his quarry in the side street, in spite of his hurried,
far-searching scrutiny. It then became a question as to which direction
the man had taken.
“He would have gone through the store, of course, if heading for Sixth
Avenue,” Patsy continued to reason. “That would have been the nearest
way, and he appeared to be in a hurry. It’s odds, then, that he went the
other way, and it’s that way for mine.”
Patsy started off again and walked for nearly a block, gazing sharply in
every store, including that of the Acme Novelty Company, but he finally
was forced to admit to himself that he had lost his man.
“Gee whiz! it’s tough luck,” he muttered, pausing and then turning back.
“I’ll eat my hat, crown and brim, if that wasn’t Goulard himself. Why
the dickens didn’t I hook onto that idea on the jump? I then could have
trailed him without sweating a hair. There’s nothing for me, now, but to
return and tell the chief, when he shows up in the store.”
Slowly retracing his steps, however, Patsy lingered for several moments
here and there, still hoping to discover his quarry.
A taxicab was approaching from Sixth Avenue. It stopped suddenly at a
store on the same side as Patsy, and some thirty feet from where he then
was standing.
A man sprang out, quickly followed by another--and Patsy then felt a
thrill shoot up his spine.
“Holy smoke! that’s Chick in disguise, as sure as I’m knee-high to a
grasshopper,” he said to himself, while he watched both men hurry into
the store.
“I know that disguise as well as I know his own face,” Patsy went on
mentally. “He was on Bart Bailey’s track, and it now is a hundred to one
that he has some job on the rascal. The other must be Bailey himself.
Great guns! I’m getting wiser every minute. Now it’s a thousand to one
that Goulard went into that store, or why has Bailey gone in there? Gee!
the boot may be on the other leg. This may be a job to get the best of
Chick. That may be Goulard’s hurried mission from the department store.”
Patsy had reasoned it out correctly, in spite of his meager information
of the actual circumstances.
Bart Bailey had, as a matter of fact, sent Goulard a message in response
to the code telegram, and had informed him of his designs.
Patsy was not slow in acting upon his suspicion, nevertheless though he
took care not to interfere with whatever Chick might have up his sleeve.
He sauntered by the store, glancing up at the sign and through the
window. He passed just in time to see Nolan turn back after locking the
door, and then vanish with Chick down the rear stairway.
“That don’t look good to me,” thought Patsy, brows knitting. “Why did he
lock that door? Chick evidently knew it and stood for it. He must know
what he’s doing, therefore, but he may slip a cog in some way. I’ll not
butt in, but I’ll be hanged if I don’t do a bit of nosing around on my
own hook.”
Patsy sauntered by the store again, and now saw plainly that it was
unoccupied. He then moved on and crossed the street to survey the two
upper floors.
“Some one lives up there,” he muttered. “It may be the gink I saw in the
store, or some one else employed there. I’ll not risk asking any
questions. Gee! I might get next in that way.”
Patsy was hit with another idea. He had discovered an open alley leading
to the rear of the building. He also had discovered a stonemason at work
in the alley, engaged in pointing up portions of the brick wall of the
next building. He was at work with a bucket of mortar and a trowel.
Patsy made a short detour and presently paused at the entrance to the
alley.
“Hist!” he called quietly.
The mason turned quickly, a ruddy young Irishman, and Patsy signed for
him to come out and follow him. They met a few rods away a moment later,
out of view from the windows above the suspected store.
“What d’ye want?” questioned the Irishman curiously.
“Slip into the saloon here and I’ll tell you,” said Patsy. “I’ll also
buy you a drink, or whatever you fancy.”
“Faith, and I can stand that, all right,” grinned the Irishman.
Patsy led the way to a rear room of the saloon, where he gave a waiter
an order, and he then proceeded to explain his project to his companion,
revealing his identity and his relations with Nick Carter.
“I wish to size up that building next to the one on which you are
working, Grady,” he said, having learned the other’s name. “I must do so
without being suspected. I can get by, all right, if you’ll lend me your
duck blouse, overalls, and hat, and remain here under cover while I get
in my work.”
Grady grinned.
“In other words, Mr. Garvan, you want to take my place,” said he.
“Exactly. I’ll slip you a five-dollar note for it, Grady, and----”
“You kape the five bucks in your pocket, Mr. Garvan,” Grady warmly
interrupted. “Faith, who wouldn’t do that much for Nick Carter! If you
get into these togs as quick as I come out of them, you can be at work
with me trowel in the shake of a lamb’s tail. I’ll hide here with my
trap closed, be it long or short that you’re gone. That goes, too, by
these five fingers across.”
“You’re all right, Grady, from your toes up,” replied Patsy gratefully.
“Take it from me, all the same, you’ll get yours for this.”
Patsy sauntered out of the saloon in about five minutes. Only a close
observer would have detected his subterfuge. One who had seen Grady at
work would merely have supposed that another mason had taken his place.
Patsy devoted very little time, of course, to pointing up the brick
wall. He began, instead, while pretending to be at work, a furtive
inspection of the walls adjoining the basement to which he had seen
Chick and Nolan descend. He could find, however, no window lighting the
underground room.
“Gee! that’s mighty strange,” he said to himself. “Have they been stoned
up for some reason? I’ll be hanged if I don’t think this crib figures in
some way in the department-store robberies. I reckon I’ll go a step
farther.”
Patsy already had found that a rear door and stairway led up to the
dwelling over the store of the Acme Novelty Company. He could observe no
one at any of the windows, however, and he felt quite sure that he could
stealthily enter the place.
“If seen by any one, I can say I came in to ask for some water for my
mortar,” he said to himself. “I’ll take the chance.”
Mounting the two low steps outside, Patsy found that the door was
locked, also that the key had been removed.
“That simplifies it,” he muttered. “I can pick this lock like breaking
sticks.”
He accomplished it with a picklock in half a minute. Quietly opening the
door a few inches, he gazed into a narrow hall and at a bare stairway
leading upward. A door in the right wall some ten feet away also met his
gaze. He paused briefly and listened.
Not a sound came from within. The hall was as silent as if the building
was deserted.
Patsy stepped in and closed the door, leaving it unlocked, lest he might
have occasion to retreat hurriedly.
The closing of the door left the hall and stairway in darkness--barring
a single thread of artificial light that now caught his eye.
It was a vertical thread in the side wall, some two feet from where he
was standing.
“Electric light,” thought Patsy, listening again. “The store is not
lighted. Nor does the store run back as far as this. The door leading
into the store from this hall is farther in. There must be a lighted
room back here, all the same, or this chink--by gracious, it’s a panel
door.”
Thrusting his nails into the crevice through which the light had shone,
Patsy had felt a section of the wall slip noiselessly to one side,
revealing a secret panel so skillfully constructed as to defy ordinary
inspection.
It revealed, moreover, something of far greater significance.
A flight of steps led down to a brightly lighted basement in the extreme
rear of the building. It was walled in like a tomb, however, with no
sign of a window.
On the cement floor stood a large horizontal engine of peculiar
construction, so peculiar that Patsy could not imagine for what it was
used, or why it was there.
Near by on a rack was a metal cylinder about two feet long and ten
inches in diameter. Each end had a movable metal cover. Around both
ends, moreover, was a flange of thick felt.
On a narrow table near the farther wall, one of them spread open
evidently for inspection, and so placed that its folds hung nearly to
the floor, lay two costly Persian shawls.
The instant Patsy’s gaze fell upon them, the truth began to dawn upon
him.
“Great guns!” he exclaimed mentally. “The two shawls mentioned by
Goulard. He did not bring them here, however. There is a connection
between this cellar and the department store. That’s a dead
open-and-shut cinch, and it’s operated in some way with this engine. By
gracious, I’ll have a closer look, if it takes a leg!”
Patsy had seen, of course, that this subterranean chamber then was
deserted. Placing the panel exactly as he had found it, Patsy crept down
the steps and gazed around.
“I have it,” he muttered. “This interior wall has been built across the
original basement so as to form this chamber, and at the same time
prevent detection by persons in the other part of the basement, who
would naturally suppose it extended back no farther than this inner
wall. It must be to the other part of the basement that Chick descended.
He still must be there, too, unless----”
That there was no alternative, that his suspicions from the outset had
been correct, that he had trapped himself also, and was up against a
sudden, desperate situation--all flashed over Patsy on the instant, when
his train of thought was broken by sounds that sent a momentary chill
down his spine.
The quick opening of a door, the heavy tread of men’s feet, mingled with
a harsh, commanding voice, which he instantly recognized to be that of
Gaston Goulard--these were the sounds that suddenly fell upon Patsy’s
ears.
“Open that panel door, Bolton, and give us more light,” Goulard was
crying. “Lug him up here, Nelson, and be quick about it. Lend him a
hand, Bart. We’ll hide the infernal dick in the engine room till we can
dispose of him. Work lively. I must phone to Lombard and make sure that
all is well before I return.”
“Great Scott!” thought Patsy, before half of the foregoing was said.
“I’m in wrong, all right, against odds which--hang it! here’s my best
chance.”
Patsy had caught sight of the Persian shawl hanging over the side of the
table. As quick as a flash, dropping to the floor, he rolled under the
table and back of the folds of the shawl, which for a moment, at least,
served to shelter him like a curtain.
He scarce had accomplished this and checked the slight disturbance of
the hanging shawl, when the panel flew open, and Nolan and Bart Bailey
roughly rolled Chick Carter, then bound hand and foot, down the flight
of steps to the engine-room floor.
“Lie there, blast you, until we’re ready to hand you something more,”
Bailey cried, with a snarl. “Meddle with our business, will you? We’ll
send you to the devil for it.”
“Leave him there,” snapped Goulard sharply. “Leave him there and close
the door. Wait here, you three, while I phone to Lombard. There’s no
telling what these Carters may have done, or will do. I’ll find out in a
couple of minutes.”
Patsy heard his strident voice even after the panel door was closed. He
also heard him rush through the hall, evidently to a telephone in the
rear part of the store.
Patsy did not wait to hear more. He whipped out his knife and rolled
from under the table, giving Chick, who was only a bit bruised by his
fall down the steps, the surprise of his life.
“Eureka! You here, Patsy?” said he quietly.
“Bet you!” muttered Patsy, quickly cutting Chick’s bands. “I’m a Charley
on the spot, for fair.”
“Is there a way out?”
“Only up these steps.”
“Thunder!”
“Tight box, old top, eh?” declared Patsy, undaunted. “But we have been
in just as tight before.”
“Yes, and then some,” Chick nodded, springing up. “Have you got two
guns?”
“Sure!”
“Let me have one. The rats have taken mine.”
“No sooner said than done,” grinned Patsy, handing Chick one of his
revolvers and retaining the other. “What next? Shall we make a break at
once and nail them in their own trenches, or----”
“Wait!” Chick interrupted. “Find the switch key that cuts off these
lights. The rascals will fight back, but they could not get a line on us
in the dark. We can get them at that advantage.”
“I’m wise,” said Patsy, vainly searching for the electric switch key.
“Be quick,” whispered Chick, crouching at the foot of the steps.
“If--ah, there’s something doing. Something is wrong.”
A roar from Gaston Goulard had reached his ears, a fierce oath, followed
by:
“There’s the deuce to pay! I can’t get Lombard on the phone. He has been
arrested. There’s a chance, by thunder, that guns will show up here at
any moment. Gag that infernal dick in the engine room, then put out the
light. Fix----”
“Perdition! We’re already fixed!”
Bart Bailey had thrown open the panel door and suddenly discovered the
two detectives.
“Hands up!” Chick shouted, starting up the steps. “Up with them,
or----”
“Hands up be hanged!”
Bart Bailey leaped aside, seeking the shelter of the wall, then whipped
out a revolver and fired through the doorway.
The bullet whizzed a foot over Chick’s head.
“Out with the lights, Patsy!” he shouted. “Smash the bulbs!”
Patsy’s revolver swung upward like a flash.
There was a crash of breaking glass--and the subterranean chamber was in
darkness.