THE FUGITIVES GET A SHOCK.
The low cabin of the canal boat _Mary Jane_ was aft. Nearly an hour and
a half after leaving the dock, Grantley and Siebold were sitting just
forward of the cabin, on a couple of coils of rope. Their heads were
thus below the level of the low roof.
They were conversing in low, guarded tones in order not to be overheard
by the captain and hands.
“I’ll confess now,” the younger of the two was saying, “that I never
expected to get away from those cursed detectives so easily. It seems
almost too good to be true.”
“Pooh!” sneered Grantley. “Like almost everybody else, including those
who ought to know better, you have let yourself believe that Carter and
his crowd come somewhere near living up to their newspaper reputations.
That’s plain nonsense. They don’t. They’re greatly overrated. The
detectives of fiction and those of fact are two very different
propositions. I’ll admit that Nick Carter is a great deal cleverer than
the police, but that isn’t saying much. He’s unusually lucky, too, and
that accounts for most of his success, such as it has been. But I
haven’t been afraid of him for a moment. Neither he nor anybody else
could follow the trail we took, and nobody will think of looking for us
on a canal boat. The idea that we would deliberately choose such an
infernally slow means of transit will never occur to our enemies,
confound them! We’re as safe right now as if we were five thousand
miles from New York. And we certainly did a good job. I almost wish I’d
left Baldwin with enough mind to realize what had happened to him. I was
a little too thorough. When they try the X rays on him, as they
undoubtedly will, they will find his cranium absolutely empty. It will
be a vast surprise to Vanderpool and the rest of the tribe of medical
nincompoops. They’ll stand around in open-mouthed amazement, wondering
how he can remain alive after such an operation. I set out to show them
something, and I have done it, but I’m sorry now that I didn’t make a
little more artistic job of it. I could have removed just enough of his
brain to make him a mental wreck, and yet left enough to cause him the
greatest anguish of mind over his condition. As it is now, he is nothing
but an empty hulk, without intelligence enough to feed or dress himself.
He’s deprived of everything but physical sensations, and most of those
are missing or robbed of their greatest intensity.”
“I see what you mean, but I wouldn’t worry about that,” returned
Siebold. “Your revenge is a thousand times better than killing would
have been, and even if you haven’t left him with the power to think,
you’ve given the others enough to think about. I’d have given a good
deal to see Carter’s face when he opened that envelope and found the
pieces of Baldwin’s check. I’ll wager that stumped him. He’ll puzzle
over that until he’s black in the face, and never guess your motive for
turning down all that money. Even if he knew about Felix Simmons he
wouldn’t see through the rest--and he’ll never know about Simmons. It’s
fortunate that Simmons----”
The speaker paused abruptly, and he and Grantley looked at each other
with a start of apprehension.
They had overheard one of the men on the barge calling to another as he
pointed beyond the stern of the unwieldy craft, down the river.
“Look at that police boat footing it up this way, Tim!” were the words
that had come to their ears. “Wonder what the cops are up to now?”
In a moment the attitudes of the two fugitives relaxed, and they smiled
rather sheepishly. Guilty consciences are not agreeable traveling
companions, but their self-confidence and contempt for their enemies
reasserted themselves at once.
“This won’t do,” muttered Grantley. “We must get our confounded nerves
under better control than that. There’s nobody after us here, and we
know it. They’re all running around in circles back there, and we’ll
have to stop shying at the mention of a policeman. Let’s have a look at
the blamed boat, and then forget it when we’ve shown a little natural
curiosity.”
Before they could rise, though, another of the boatmen gave an
exclamation which halted the two criminals and left them tense and
motionless.
“By George, they’ve done changed their course, an’ are headin’ right
this way!” the man ejaculated. “Gosh! I ain’t cracked no safes, I’ll
swear! How about you guys?”
The jocular query was addressed to the speaker’s fellows, but that did
not give much comfort to the two skulkers in the shadow of the cabin.
They decided to remain where they were until they saw which way the cat
was going to jump.
Meanwhile, however, Grantley thought it best to pull the wool over the
boatmen’s eyes.
“What’s that I hear about a police boat?” he asked lazily. “Tell us when
it comes abreast. We’re too darned comfortable here to get up for
anything short of a battleship.”
The man made some laughing answer, and Grantley and Siebold managed to
keep up a semblance of careless conversation to mask their anxiety.
They had had the best of reasons for believing that effective pursuit
was out of the question, but at the approach of the police their guilty
fears had instinctively flamed up.
Those who had been watching the boat approach had little doubt now that
its business was with the little flotilla of barges, and their mystified
comments caused the fugitives’ hearts to sink like lead.
It seemed incredible that their carefully concealed get-away had come to
naught so soon. Surely the police boat was not after them. Perhaps one
of the boatmen on the _Mary Jane_, or another of the canal boats, had
knocked somebody down in some waterside quarrel. That must be it, and
yet----
“Tug, ahoy, there!” an authoritative voice boomed through a megaphone.
“Don’t be in a hurry! There are a couple of fellows we want back here.”
The voice was startlingly close, and the sound had hardly died away
before the bow of the police boat came into view opposite the criminals’
position.
Their fears were uppermost now, and their terrorized instincts told them
that the worst had happened.
With one accord they rose to their feet, whipping out their automatics
as they did so.
One penetrating glance was enough for them.
They recognized Nick and Chick, and realized that there was something
vaguely familiar about the appearance of a third figure on the police
boat’s deck--that of Jack Wise.
Before those about them knew what was happening, they had begun firing.
The tow was a big one, consisting of nine barges in all, lashed three
abreast. Grantley and Siebold were on the left-hand barge in the first
tier, counting from the front. Therefore, as the police boat had
approached on the right, they were obliged to fire across two of the
barges.
The approach of the official tug had drawn the attention of the boatmen
on all of the barges. Two or three of these curious ones were almost
within the line of fire, with their backs turned to the fugitives.
Siebold fired wildly, and one of the bystanders went down, with a groan.
The rest scattered or threw themselves flat on the decks.
Grantley, however, in contrast to his nervous assistant, was perfectly
cool. The detectives were hardly more than twenty feet away, despite the
two intervening canal boats, and the scoundrelly surgeon began pumping
away as fast as he could and with the steadiest of hands.
His first shot went just over the detectives’ heads, but the second one
would doubtless have caught Nick full in the breast had it not been that
the police boat grazed the side of the nearest barge at that moment.
The result was that Nick and his companions were thrown off their
balance for the time being, luckily for them. Their efforts to prevent
themselves from falling were as effective as if they had been able--and
willing--to dodge Grantley’s bullets.
The second of these ripped through Nick’s coat, gouging his side a
little.
“Down!” commanded the detective, and, just as the fugitives fired again,
the five detectives sank below the level of the police boat’s rail.
All but their heads and weapons, that is. They remained in sight, and
their revolvers blazed away in a businesslike volley that woke the
echoes of the New Jersey hills.
A naval battle in miniature was taking place off West Sixtieth Street,
Manhattan.