“Follow the wire!”
The unknown woman’s words seemed to ring in Verbeck’s head.
“We must decide instantly,” he said. “Shall we follow the wire or
remain here and await an alarm?”
“Follow the wire!” Riley advised. “That woman is one of the Black
Star’s gang that’s turned against him. She’s tipped us off right, and
I’ll bet on it! It’s only a few minutes after midnight. It shouldn’t
take us long. Dictograph! Huh! No wonder he knew everything we said.
Poor boobs!”
“Do we go alone, or take the police?” Verbeck asked.
“Let’s take ’em. It won’t hurt, and may do a great deal of good. We’ll
have the sergeant leave one man here to take any telephone message
that comes.”
Riley ran to the door and blew his whistle. Verbeck and Muggs already
were at work. Before Riley could instruct the sergeant that a man be
detailed to remain at the house while the others followed, Verbeck and
Muggs had pulled the heavy table to one side—to find the wire passing
through a tiny hole in the floor and into the basement.
Verbeck led the way below. The wire was picked up easily, running to
an outside wall and through it. On the outside it went up the side of
the house, beside a water pipe, thence to a tree near by.
“Follow the wire—and be quick about it!” Riley commanded the sergeant
and his men. The police knew only that this had something to do with
the pursuit of the Black Star, but the excitement of Verbeck and his
companions was infectious, and they went at their work eagerly,
sensing that seconds were precious.
Electric torches flashed as they surrounded the tree, and one man
prepared to climb.
“There it runs!” Riley shouted. “Flash your lights! See it? To the
other tree!”
Thus they crossed the yard to a corner, going from tree to tree,
flashing their lamps always on that slim, long-hanging wire.
“Whoever heard of a dictograph wire this long!” Riley exclaimed.
“Nobody but the Black Star would use it. No telling where it runs—and
we haven’t a great deal of time! Send back another man, sergeant, to
stand by the house and bring us news if there’s a telephone call. Send
one who can drive Verbeck’s roadster to us!”
A man was selected and sent, and the tracing of the wire went on. They
came to the corner, and there the wire sprang from a tree to a
telephone pole, and across the street to another pole, then to an
unimproved block of land, where it ran from tree to tree as before.
Led by Verbeck and Riley, with Muggs at their heels, the police waded
through snowdrifts, crashed through wet underbrush, rending the black
night with the light of their torches. The wire twisted from tree to
tree, never more than a few feet above the ground.
“Whoever laid that wire didn’t waste any time,” Riley said.
They lost it in a clump of brush, but found it again. Every man of
them was wet to the waist now from breaking through the drifts of
snow, but their enthusiasm was not dampened.
“We’ve been half an hour already!” Muggs protested. “How far does this
thing run?”
No one took the trouble to answer him. They had crossed the unimproved
block at last and reached another street. Once more the wire sprang to
the crosspiece of a telephone pole, and across the street to another.
Now it ran along the edge of a private park to a narrow alley, and
there it followed the roof line of sheds.
They began exercising some caution now, for there was no telling where
the wire would end, or when, and they did not care to stumble on the
retreat of the Black Star unprepared for a clash. Muggs, some paces
ahead of the others, strained eyes and ears to detect the presence of
a foe. Muggs didn’t feel sure they had done right in following the
wire, but he realized that the tip from the unknown woman was one that
could not have been ignored.
At the end of the alley, the wire ran in the direction of a cross
street. Here it was suspended from the trees again, but higher, and
there was difficulty in following it. It took half an hour to reach
the next corner, and there the wire turned back toward Verbeck’s
house.
“’Tis a quarter after one,” Riley said. “There’s been no alarm from
headquarters, or we’d have had the man coming after us in the
roadster. But where the deuce does this wire run?”
Down the street a block, around the corner, went the wire, from tree
to tree, now high in the air and now looped low. To the alley again,
and down it in the black night! Here, their torches flashing, they
followed it from shed to shed, and finally came to where it ran down
the side of a garage and so reached the ground. Muggs dug frantically
with his hands until the snow had been thrown to one side. The wire
ran beneath a board, and half a dozen men scraped snow away until the
board could be raised, Verbeck and Riley working frantically and
urging on the others.
The board ended at the edge of an iron manhole, and Riley, with a
muttered curse, got up from his knees.
“Into the sewer!” he exclaimed. “Into the sewer! Think o’ that!”
“It’s a fake—we’ve been done!” Muggs declared.
“’Tis no fake!” Riley protested. “Here’s the wire, and we was told to
follow it, wasn’t we? Into the sewer!”
“Off with that cover!” Verbeck shouted, stepping forward and taking
command. “You’ve forgotten something, Riley. This is the old sewer,
and has been used for two or three years as a conduit for gas pipes
and electric wires. There’s no sewage in it.”
Riley’s exclamation of relief showed that he had forgotten. Like
madmen they worked at the covering of the manhole, smashing the ice
around it, tearing at it with their hands until they were raw and
bleeding. Presently they hurled it to one side.
“In we go!” Verbeck said. “And let’s try to make better time!”
“Easy there! We go—but we go prepared!” Riley said. “I’ll go first, if
you don’t mind, Roger. Some of the Black Star’s gentlemen friends
might be waiting in this old sewer with implements of destruction to
greet us.”
He flashed his torch, and lowered himself. A moment later they heard
his call, and one by one they slipped from the alley into the big bore
in the earth, the last man letting the manhole covering fall into
place.
Straight ahead they went now, bending low, dodging elbows of big gas
mains, on the alert for uninsulated electric wires. The cement walls
were covered with frost, the air was like that of a refrigerator.
They made a turning, and went on, always following the little wire
that had been looped along the joints of the gas main. And always they
were on the alert, flashing their torches ahead, expecting to be
greeted any instant by some show of hostility. They knew the
reputation of the Black Star—these men. Perhaps, after all, this was
his trick. Perhaps they would find themselves prisoners underground,
or face some new peril the master criminal had invented for their
discomfiture.
Another curve in the big bore, with Riley stopping them and creeping
ahead to peer around the bend, and be sure no danger waited! They made
their way along as swiftly as they could now, their teeth chattering,
their hands numb with the cold. And now the wire ran to the roof
again, along a smaller gas main, and so to another manhole.
“Out again into the night!” Riley grunted. “What do you know about
that? Well—let’s get after it!”
They got beneath the manhole covering and fought to get it free. It
was heartbreaking work, for the covering had a weight of snow above
it, and ice filled every crevice. But finally they felt it give, and
after a time forced it a short distance to one side, the snow caving
in upon them.
Muggs crawled up and dug at the snow! Inch by inch they forced the
manhole covering back, and finally they emerged into the open air and
closed the covering again. They traced the wire to a tree at the end
of the alley, and from there to a telephone pole, and across the
street in the usual manner.
They spoke but seldom now. They were almost exhausted; more than one
feared they had been hoaxed. Again they flashed their torches and
followed the wire, once more across the corner of an unimproved lot,
across another street, and then——
“Wh-what?” Riley cried. “Do you see where we are? Back to Verbeck’s
place—that’s what! On the other side of the house!”
He would have said more, but Verbeck’s grasp on his arm stopped him.
Into Verbeck’s heart had come a sudden fear, and he didn’t see the
advisability of the sergeant and the police squad knowing everything.
“What kind of a stunt is this?” the sergeant growled.
“Never mind!” Riley counseled sternly, aware of what the end might be.
“We’ve been following this wire, haven’t we? Very well! We had a
reason for wanting to know where it ran. And that’s all.”
The sergeant subsided, but he guessed that it was not all.
They were in the yard of the Verbeck place again now, the wire running
from tree to tree as before. Finally it sprang to the side of the
house, and down it to a window in a rear room. There Riley, who was
leading, stopped.
“That’s all for the present, sergeant,” he said. “Go inside and get
warm—you and the men. If there’s been any telephone message, come out
and tell us.”
The men needed no second invitation to hurry to the fire, and they
followed the sergeant rapidly around the corner of the house toward
the veranda, leaving Verbeck and Riley and Muggs alone beneath the
window.
“Well?” Riley said.
“Follow it!” Verbeck commanded. “It must end somewhere. And we don’t
need the squad with us when we find the end.”
“That’s the way I looked at it. Great Scott, what a chase! Through the
snow and through the sewer——”
“No message!” the sergeant shouted from the veranda.
Muggs raised the window. They crept over the sill into the dusty room.
Again Riley’s torch flashed, and they saw the wire running up the side
of the window to the ceiling and through it.
“To the floor above!” Verbeck said.
They ran to the stairs and went up. As they passed the door of the
living room, they saw the policemen standing before the big fireplace,
extending their numb hands to the blaze.
They had no difficulty locating the wire on the second floor. It came
from below, and ran up the side of a window. It followed the border of
the wall paper, and once more it penetrated a ceiling.
“Into the garret!” Riley said.
They ran up the narrow stairs. Riley and Muggs both held their
automatics ready now, and Verbeck reached for his. They threw open the
door opening into one of the half-finished rooms. There was the wire,
almost hidden as it ran along the bottom of the window. It followed a
wide crack in the floor across the room. It disappeared into the wall.
Riley raised a hand for silence, and pointed to the floor.
“We were blind before,” he whispered. “See those tracks? Whoever made
them scattered dust behind him. They’re almost obliterated—but there
they are! We didn’t use our eyes before. And that wire——”
“Must run into the old toy closet,” Verbeck interrupted. “But—see
here! The door of the closet is locked on this side, and you can see
it hasn’t been opened.”
“You’re right—it hasn’t! But we’ll just take a look!”
Verbeck turned the key. Muggs and Riley focused the light of their
torches on the door, and held their automatics ready. Verbeck sprang
aside and hurled the door open.
The interior of the closet was flooded with light. All three gasped as
they looked.
No Black Star menaced them with weapon. No diabolical engine of
destruction was there.
But there was the end of the wire!