CHAPTER VI.

HOW PATSY MADE GOOD.

It was one o’clock when Chick Carter entered his room in the Shelby House. He removed his coat, hat, and disguise, then lit a cigar and sat down to size up the circumstances and the evidence he had found in the express car.

How was the robbery committed? How did Cady figure in it, and what became of him? How had Nick been overcome, and why had he been carried away by the bandits, assuming that he had not been killed and thrown from the car?

Chick did not believe the last. He would have seen the body when hastening up the tracks. He knew that these crooks would commit murder only as a last resort, moreover, and the evidence in the car did not point to bloodshed and murder.

Chick felt reasonably sure, in fact, that Nick was alive and in the hands of the desperadoes.

“Two empty packing cases and an open safe, opened by means of the combination,” he mused intently. “No force apparent except what must have been required to get the best of Nick and Cady. But could two men concealed in packing cases, and the cases could not have contained more than two, have overcome two such men as Nick and Cady? By Jove, it doesn’t seem possible.

“Nor could Janet Payson’s companion have had any hand in the work done in the express car. He would have had time only to disconnect the train, which he certainly went forward to do. All that was cut and dried, previously planned, and it was done by a man expert at such work.

“Is it possible, then, that Cady is in league with these crooks? Did he hold up Nick and get him with the help of his hidden confederates? Did he open the safe? Did he substitute—stop one moment! By Jove, there was no substitute money package in the car, nor in the safe, or I must surely have seen it. I made a thorough inspection.”

Chick’s brows knit closer under the mental concentration with which he strove to fathom the conflicting circumstances.

“That special-delivery letter certainly mentioned a substitute. It read, I remember distinctly: ‘We’ll have the substitute down fine in ample time and the other dead to rights.’

“H’m, that’s not so clear, in view of what has occurred and the fact that no substitute money package was found in the car. It certainly is worded a bit oddly. To have one dead to rights is a term usually applied to a situation, a gang, or a man; not to a parcel, package, or anything of that kind.

“By Jove, it may in this case have been a man. The substitute may have been a man in place of Cady. That would explain Cady’s disappearance from the car. A man made up to perfectly resemble Cady—that’s it, by gracious, as sure as I’m a foot high,” Chick decided. “That’s why Martin worded the letter in that way, that he’d have a substitute down fine, in ample time. A substitute to take Cady’s place in the express car—that’s what!”

Chick’s countenance had lighted. Through this process of reasoning he had deduced the one fact, the one crafty subterfuge, that had made the robbery possible under all of the other known circumstances.

It told Chick, too, how easily confederates of the substitute rascal could have been concealed in the car, and how easily Nick could have been held up and overcome under such unexpected adverse conditions.

“But what has become of Cady?” Chick next asked himself. “He was supposed to be in Philadelphia, of course, in order to make this run. By Jove, I have it! Got him dead to rights, eh? I’ll see about that. I’ll set another ball rolling in this game—one that may knock out a ten-strike.”

Chick sprang up with the last and hastened down to the hotel office. Entering a telephone booth and closing the door, he called up the central exchange and learned that he could quickly get a clear wire to Philadelphia.

“I want the police headquarters,” said he. “The officer in charge.”

Chick had waited only seven minutes, when the operator rang him up and announced:

“All ready.”

“Hello!” Chick called. “Police headquarters, Philadelphia?”

“Yes.”

Distance did not serve to soften the strong, sonorous voice. The wire carried the sound perfectly. The voice was a familiar one to the detective, that of an old friend in police circles, and Chick laughed audibly.

“It’s easy to recognize a voice that rings true,” said he. “How are you, Lieutenant Lang?”

“Fine!” came the answer. “But who are you?”

“Chickering Carter.”

“Oh, ho! Chick, eh?” Lang’s sonorous laugh could be heard. “Glad to hear from you. Where are you?”

“On a case down Shelby way.”

“I heard that Nick was in that section. Something doing?”

“Plenty, Lang, and then some.”

“That just about suits you, I suppose. How can I aid you?”

“I want hurry-up information about a woman.”

“What name?”

“Janet Payson.”

“You’ll not have to wait long,” cried Lang, laughing. “I can supply you right off the reel.”

“Good!” Chick cried. “Do you know her?”

“Only professionally,” Lang responded. “She’s pretty well known here by the boys in brass buttons.”

“What about her, Ned?”

“Fly!” Lang said tersely. “As fly as one often meets.”

“A crook?” Chick inquired.

“Crooked, but not a crook. I don’t know that she has ever been arrested. She devotes her attractions to bleeding any easy mark that comes her way. She is known here as Jaunty Janet.”

“I’ve got you,” said Chick. “Do you know where she lives?”

“That’s a fat question. What am I on the force for?” Lang cried, laughing. “She has a ground-floor flat in Martin Street, No. 20.”

“Correct!” Chick exclaimed. “Do you know anything about her male friends?”

“No, nothing.”

“Listen. I want you to do something for me.”

“Come across with it, Chick, and consider it done.”

“Telegraph me the result. Address me in care of the Shelby House.”

“I will do so. What’s wanted?”

Chick told him and returned to his room, at the door of which he now found—Patsy Garvan.

“Gee! I’ve been on nettles for an hour, ever since the Southern Limited arrived,” Patsy impatiently declared, after greeting him. “I was at the station and heard about the robbery, but I saw nothing of you, or the chief, and I figured that you both were in wrong, for fair. What’s become of the chief? I’ve been here twice in search of you. Couldn’t you head off the job? What do you want for a starter? Why didn’t you——”

“Cut it! Cut it!” Chick interrupted. “Bridle your tongue, or you’ll ask more questions than I could answer before daylight. Hit up a cigar and give me time to explain. You’re not all the mustard in the pot. Didn’t you know that?”

“Sure I know it,” retorted Patsy. “But I’m some mustard, all the same, with a dash of tabasco thrown in. What’s eating you, anyway? Send for an ice bag and cool your block. Your hair may wilt with the heat and look like dead grass. You’d be a bird, then.”

Chick laughed and lit another cigar.

It was two in the morning, mind you, and both had been busy and on their nerves for eighteen hours, a sufficient excuse for impatience and irritability, which really had no sting.

Patsy grinned and sat down, taking a brier pipe from his pocket and deliberately filling it. Not until he had lit it and wafted a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling did he speak again, and then he stared at Chick and said simply:

“Well?”

Chick settled back in his chair and told him what had occurred.

Patsy’s face then had lost its sphinxlike expression.

“Gee whiz!” he commented. “Say, Chick, old top, this isn’t so bad.”

“Come on with it,” Chick replied, knowing he had something to report. “What have you learned that’s worth knowing?”

“Worth knowing—that’s my long suit with four honors,” said Patsy. “I never pick up thirteen measly duckers, no matter who deals the papes. Say, Chick, old chap, listen!”

“Listen, eh? What do you think I’m doing? Do I look like a lay figure with wax ears? I am listening.”

Patsy ended his levity and drew up in his chair.

“You know whose trail I have been on—that of Gus Dewitt,” he said earnestly. “I got the chief’s telephone spiel from the post office, which put me wise to what that special-delivery letter contained, and that was the last I knew of his suspicions and designs. But I had my eye on Dewitt, all right, and I saw him receive the letter and read it.”

“And then?” questioned Chick.

“He then made a move that nearly shook me off his track,” Patsy continued. “He bolted straight for the stable back of the Reddy House. He had a horse out there tied under a shed, and he mounted him without a word to any one and rode out of town as if a dozen devil’s imps were after him.”

“You knew why he went, of course.”

“Sure thing, Chick, since I knew what was in the letter. I knew he had gone to notify the gang that the job was to be done to-night.”

“Certainly,” Chick nodded. “There was nothing else to it.”

“There was enough more to it to keep me on the go until nearly dark,” Patsy protested. “It was up to me to trail him, wasn’t it?”

“Sure,” Chick smiled. “I admit that.”

“Well, it didn’t prove to be soft walking,” Patsy resumed. “I got next to the hostler, two stable hands, and a chauffeur, who hang around there, but they didn’t know him from a side of leather, except that his name was Gus Dewitt and that he occasionally rode into town for a day or an evening.”

“I see.”

“Then a cabby showed up who remembered having seen him ride in one night with Jake Hanlon, at whose place we cornered Jim Reardon for the Glidden murder.”

“At Benton Corners.”

“Sure,” nodded Patsy. “That, of course, put a bee in my bonnet. I reasoned that, if Dewitt and Hanlon were friends, both might be in this job, as well as those two thoroughbred rascals who hang out at Hanlon’s place, Dick Bryan, and Link Magee.”

“Quite likely, Patsy,” Chick agreed.

“I reckoned, too, that Dewitt was heading for Benton Corners, since he had taken that direction.”

“You went out there?”

“I decided to take that chance, for I could see no other way of trailing him. As I was leaving the stable yard, however, I noticed the tracks left by his horse’s hoofs.”

“What about them?”

“One had a little peculiarity.”

“What was that?”

“The shoe on the off fore hoof was different from the others. It had a bar plate, and the mark of it showed plainly wherever it struck yielding soil.”

“I follow you,” Chick nodded.

“And I followed the tracks of that bar-plate shoe,” said Patsy. “There were none in the paved streets, mind you, but I hustled out to the road leading to Benton Corners, and there I found the tracks again.”

“Good work.”

“Knowing I might be mistaken, however, if I assumed that Dewitt had gone to Hanlon’s place, I decided to stick to my trail.”

“A wise decision, Patsy.”

“It took me some time to follow it, but it led me to Hanlon’s place, all right, and, after watching from the woods back of the stable until late in the afternoon, I made a discovery.”

“Yes?”

“Jake Hanlon showed up on horseback and rode into the stable, and Dick Bryan came from the house and joined him.”

“But the discovery, Patsy?”

“Bryan had it in his hand,” said Patsy dryly. “The special-delivery letter and the disguise he had worn as Gus Dewitt.”

“Bryan and Dewitt are the same, eh?”

“Yes, and Dalton thrown in,” declared Patsy. “Bryan has been posing in all three characters. He’s a pretty slick gink at that, too, I judge, from the confidence with which he spoke when talking with Hanlon about it.”

“You could hear what they were saying?”

“Only for a few moments. Bryan showed him the letter and the telegrams, and they then hurried into the house. Out they came in about ten minutes, however, both with revolvers and shotguns, and then they mounted their horses and rode off to the north.”

“To join others of the gang, no doubt,” said Chick.

“That’s how I sized it up.”

“Surely.”

“Hanlon spoke of another crib, but he said nothing definite, and I knew only the direction they took,” Patsy went on. “I felt pretty sure that you and the chief would head off the robbery, you see, so I hiked back to Shelby to hunt you up and report. Now, hang it, I learn that the job has been pulled off, and you think the chief is in the hands of the rascals.”

“I have hardly a doubt of it,” said Chick.

“It won’t be easy, then, to corner this gang and recover their plunder,” Patsy dubiously declared. “They’ll know we are after them and——”

“But not what you have discovered,” put in Chick pointedly.

“That’s true. That may help some,” Patsy allowed. “If we could only find out what other crib Hanlon meant and where it is located, and devise some way to get there before they can cover their tracks and dispose of Nick——”

“Stop a moment,” Chick interrupted. “I think we can accomplish both.”

“You do?” Patsy’s countenance lighted.

“I certainly do. We’ll put something over on these ruffians, Patsy, that will have failed to enter their heads. We’ll get them, all right, take it from me.”

“What do you mean? Explain.”

“Pull up here and listen,” said Chick, tossing away his cigar.