CHAPTER XIII.

NICK CARTER’S QUIET HAND.

What Nick meant by the last words he had uttered, no doubt he could have told. As no one heard them, and he was talking to himself, anyhow, presumably it was nobody else’s business what he meant.

That there was something behind the detective’s willingness to take part in such a raid as this, both Chick and Patsy were sure, but neither knew just what it was. There were some things that the chief did not tell even to his most trusted employees.

That there had been a development in the room raided which had disturbed for the moment even the steady poise of the great detective, none knew but himself.

In T. Burton Potter he had recognized one of the men he most wanted to get hold of just now. The other was Andrew Lampton, but he felt that he could let the hunt for Lampton go for the present, until he had his hands on the elegant Potter.

What was Potter doing while Nick laughed at the cleverness of his escape from the room? Well, he was trying to achieve a get-away under extremely difficult circumstances.

Once clear of the room where he had managed to give the detective the slip, he made a half turn toward the downward flight of stairs. But another officer showed himself at the bottom. So he swung around and dashed up the stairs to the floor above.

In the darkness, Nick was not sure whether his man had gone up or down. This involved another loss of a few moments. But his keen ear soon told him where Potter was, and up the stairs he went after his man.

T. Burton Potter heard his pursuer, and he did not dodge into any more rooms. Instead, he continued up the stairs, flight after flight, with one last, desperate hope in his heart—just one! That was that he might escape by way of the roof.

He had one advantage over Nick, in that he knew the house well, while this was the first visit of the detective.

Aided by this fact, and by the darkness, with many twists and turns at landings and on the stairs themselves, T. Burton Potter was in the garret at about thirty seconds ahead of Nick.

He lost half that gain in unbolting a trapdoor and forcing it open, so that he could crawl through to the roof. It was a serious loss to him, for the detective almost had him by the legs as he clambered through. Before he could slam down the trap door, Nick was out on the roof after him.

It is not an uncommon thing for detectives and uniformed police officers to chase crooks over roofs. Some thrilling experiences of this kind could be related by a great many policemen, but each story of the pursuit of some desperado over the roofs of skyscrapers has features of its own that make it stand out from all others.

It was so in this case.

The detective took a hasty survey, and saw that, while the roofs ran along over the two houses, that was as far as they did go. Every two houses were separated from the next two by the width of a narrow alley like that in which policemen were waiting below to catch any of the fugitives from the raid.

“Come back! Don’t be a fool!” shouted Nick.

The man he was after had dashed along the roof, and now was standing on the low parapet which protected the roof on the side where it was divided from the next house by the alley.

T. Burton Potter glanced back for an instant. He could make out the form of the detective dimly in the darkness. Then, without reply, he put all his strength into a tremendous leap, and went off the parapet!

“Great heavens!” exclaimed Nick. “He couldn’t jump that. At least, I don’t see how he could. It is not less than nine feet, and he hadn’t any run to help him.”

So sure was the detective that Potter could not have jumped the gap that he hurried down the stairs to the parlor floor, where he met Brockton.

“Got them all, Brockton?”

“All except Lampton and that fellow you were after. I mean, the dude who was sleeping in the chair. Where is he?”

“Jumped off the roof. He’s in the alley at the side of the house. Send some of your men to look. He tried to leap from one roof to the next. That was craziness. He couldn’t do it, of course. And he took such a risk for the sake of avoiding a term in prison. Why, it’s sixty feet. There can’t be anything left of him.”

But not a vestige of Potter could they find, and Nick could believe only that he had really made the seeming impossible leap.

When the prisoners had been safely conveyed to the police station, to be dealt with in due course by the government officers, Nick went around there himself, to make his report of what had taken place under his supervision.

That was merely a dry, official proceeding, and Nick, wearied of the whole business, and more disgusted than he would have cared to acknowledge over the way T. Burton Potter had escaped him, was about to go out of the station to the taxi he had ordered, when Brockton remarked casually:

“We have one prisoner who has a queer story to tell. He says he is your assistant?”

“What?” shouted Nick.

“He’s a young fellow. We didn’t see him in the room with the others. But he’s one of the gang. He was trying to slip out of the door into the front when one of my men grabbed him.”

“Where is he?”

Nick interrupted the narration curtly, and a black frown gathered over his keen eyes and brought his heavy brows together.

“In a cell, of course.”

“Did he tell you his name?”

“Why, yes. That was more of it. He had the nerve to say his name was Chick Carter, your assistant!”

“Good heavens! And you’ve arrested a man against whom you have no case, even when he told you he was my assistant, and that his name was Chick Carter. Didn’t you think it worth while to make any inquiries?”

“No. We——”

“Didn’t it occur to anybody in this police station that he might be telling the truth?”

“Why, no, Mr. Carter,” answered the lieutenant at the desk. “We put the name he gave us on the blotter. We always do that, even when we know it isn’t the real name. We have so many arrests where men say their name is something entirely different from the one they give. We have no time to make inquiries into that sort of thing.”

“Let me see this prisoner—this man Chick Carter!” demanded Nick.

The lieutenant called out to the doorman to bring Chick up from below.

There was silence until the door opened. Nick was frowning, and every officer in the big station looked worried. They began to feel that there had been a mistake somewhere.

“Here he is, lieutenant!”

It was the uniformed officer in charge of the cells who spoke, and he held by the elbow no less a person than Chick.

“Hello, chief!” he cried, as he saw his employer. “Can’t you get me out of this?”

But he was already free. No sooner had the officer holding him seen the look of recognition on the detective’s face than he released his hold of the prisoner’s elbow.

“What’s this mean, Chick?” asked his chief.

“Search me!” laughed Chick. “One of the men grabbed me because he found me in the house, just coming out of the yard door, to take a hand in the raid with you.”

“The officer said he was drunk!” growled Lieutenant Brockton rather defiantly. “I suppose there must have been some reason for his making that statement.”

“I reckon there was,” conceded Chick. “I had been baked behind a stove where they were making silver dollars and halves, and what with the heat and the fumes of charcoal and hot metal, I was nearly a goner. Then I had a scrap with the officer, and——”

“If you’d been in such a place as that, behind a stove, it probably made you dizzy, didn’t it, Chick?”

It was Nick who asked the question, and, as he did so, he looked scornfully at Lieutenant Brockton.

“Well, what do you think, chief?” was Chick’s response. “I don’t mind saying that if I seemed a drunk, I don’t blame the officer. I dare say, if I had been in his place, I should have made the same mistake.”

“I’m sure you would,” threw in the lieutenant. “When you came in, you looked as if you had one of the worst souses that ever came into this station. But I am very sorry the mistake occurred.”

“So am I,” declared Chick, grinning, but with tremendous earnestness at the same time.

“I’ll scratch your name off the blotter,” went on the lieutenant.

“Thanks!” returned Chick dryly. “What was the charge against me? ‘Drunk, resisting an officer, and suspicious character,’ I suppose?”

“You’ve hit it exactly,” was the reply of the lieutenant. “But it will all be obliterated. I hope there are no hard feelings.”

“None on my part, now that I am out,” declared Chick.

To prove it, he shook hands all around, including Lieutenant Brockton and the desk lieutenant and doorkeeper. Then he went out to the taxi with his chief.

“I’m sorry all this happened, chief,” said Chick contritely, as the cab got under way. “But the officers wouldn’t listen to a word from me. They threatened to dust me with their clubs if I didn’t shut up. So, of course, I had to shut up.”

“The wisest thing to do under the circumstances,” answered Nick in an absent tone. “We will stay in the taxi even on the ferryboat, unless you feel that you must get out for the fresh air of the river.”

“I’ll do what you do, chief,” returned Chick. “How did the raid come out? You look worried. Was anything wrong about it?”

“Yes. Very much wrong.”

“How?”

“We did not capture Andrew Lampton, for one thing, and we missed T. Burton Potter, for another.”

“Who’s T. Burton Potter?” asked Chick, puzzled. “He’s a new one on me.”

“He is not a new one to me, although to-night was the first time I’ve seen him—by that name.”

“You’ve got me going, chief,” confessed Chick. “I’m blessed if I know what you are talking about.”

“I’m talking about T. Burton Potter. He is dressed in a way that I never saw Howard Milmarsh. But if Potter is not Howard, then I’m afraid I shall find it hard to believe my own eyes hereafter.”