CHAPTER V.
PATSY STRIKES A SNAG.
Patsy Garvan never did things by halves. Soon after six o’clock that evening a dapper young man of remarkably inoffensive aspect, barring a somewhat fierce upward twist of his mustache, which was also remarkable in that it could be quickly transferred to his vest pocket—soon after six o’clock this dapper young man entered the Hotel Westgate and sauntered to the office inclosure.
Though it was a busy hour of the day and the subordinate clerks actively engaged, Patsy quickly found an opportunity to speak to Vernon, to whom he said quietly:
“Keep that same expression on your face, old top. A look of surprise might be seen by some gink whom we least suspect. I’m Garvan, Nick Carter’s assistant. Invite me into that cubbyhole back of the bookkeeper’s desk. I want a bit of information from you.”
Vernon instantly grasped the situation. He nodded, while smiling and shaking hands with Patsy over the counter.
“Step around to the end of the inclosure and I’ll let you in,” he replied.
Patsy did so and was admitted, taking a chair back of the bookkeeper’s high desk, which concealed him from view of persons outside of the inclosure.
“By Jove, Garvan, I never would have recognized you,” Vernon then laughed quietly. “What can I do for you?”
Patsy told him without stating why he wanted the information, but cautioned him to say nothing about the matter.
“I can tell you in a very few minutes,” Vernon then said, more gravely. “The ledger accounts will show just who has been here during the period you mention, also just when they arrived. I will get it. We will look it over together.”
“Go ahead,” nodded Patsy.
It required, as Vernon had said, only a few minutes to learn who had been permanent guests in the hotel since the middle of August. The list was not a long one. It contained only four names, in fact, though thousands of transients had been coming and going during the same interval.
“Permanent guests did not begin to flock in, you see, until the end of the summer season,” Vernon explained.
“So much the better,” said Patsy. “This simplifies the matter. Two of these guests are women. What do you know about them?”
“Both are wealthy widows,” said Vernon. “One is seventy years old, and she has only a maid companion. The other has two daughters, who occupy the same suite with her. Her rooms are on the ninth floor.”
“Any man living with either of them?”
“No.”
“I can safely drop them then, all right,” thought Patsy. “What about this man Hanaford, of London?”
“He is an American representative of several big English woolen mills,” said Vernon. “I have known him for a long time. He is about sixty years old and is a man of unquestionable integrity.”
“What about the last, then?” questioned Patsy, assured as to the English agent. “By Jove, he’s the man the chief saw in Mademoiselle Falloni’s suite this morning—Doctor David Guelpa.”
“Yes, the same,” nodded Vernon. “I am not so sure about him.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Very little. In fact, Garvan, nothing positively reliable. He came here on the fifth of September, as you see, with a valet named John Draper.”
“Two days after Clayton’s abduction and liberation,” thought Patsy, with growing suspicion.
“He stated that he was a Hungarian physician, a throat specialist, and that he might remain indefinitely in New York,” Vernon continued. “He took an expensive suite, which he since has occupied with his valet, and a few days later he opened offices in Fifth Avenue, which he still retains. I don’t know how much business he does, Garvan, but seems to have plenty of money.”
“Is a social man?”
“Not at all. He is very reserved.”
“What are his office hours? Is he usually here at eleven o’clock in the morning?” asked Patsy, quick to suspect his presence in the hotel on that particular morning.
“No, not ordinarily,” said Vernon. “He may have been detained this morning.”
“It’s very obvious that he was here, all right,” Patsy said dryly. “Does he have any mail?”
“No, none. I suppose it goes to his office.”
“Does he receive any visitors?”
“Very few. There are two men who occasionally come here to see him.”
“Do you know them?”
“No.”
“Where is his office?”
“Less than ten minutes’ walk from here,” said Vernon. “I will look up the number for you.”
“Never mind it, Vernon, at present,” said Patsy, detaining him. “On what floor is Doctor Guelpa’s suite?”
“The fourth.”
“Is it near the stairway, or elevator?”
“It adjoins the side stairway.”
“The one leading down to the corridor adjoining Clayton’s private office?”
“Yes.”
“H’m, is that so?” Patsy muttered. “This looks very much as if I had hit a promising trail.”
“You mean——”
“Never mind what I mean, Vernon, and be sure you don’t lisp a word of this, nor look at Doctor Guelpa as if you had any distrust,” cautioned Patsy. “Is his suite on the same floor as that of Mademoiselle Falloni?”
“Yes, and in the same corridor.”
“What’s the number?”
Vernon glanced at a schedule on the bookkeeper’s desk and quickly informed him, Patsy mentally retaining the number.
“Have you seen Doctor Guelpa this evening?” he then inquired.
“Yes. He went in to dinner just before you entered. It’s not time for him to come out.”
“Did Draper, the valet, come down with him?”
“I’m not sure. I saw Draper in the office just before Doctor Guelpa showed up, however, and he may be at dinner.”
“I’ll mighty soon find out,” thought Patsy; then, aloud: “That’s all, Vernon, and I’m vastly obliged. Mum’s the word, mind you.”
“Trust me, Garvan,” nodded the clerk.
Patsy thanked him again and departed. He had decided what course he would shape. He knew that he could easily learn whether Doctor Guelpa, or his valet, then was in the physician’s suite.
“If both are absent, by Jove, I’ll have a look at his rooms,” he said to himself. “They may contain something worth seeing. It may be more than a coincidence, by gracious, that he was a Charley on the spot this morning and contrived to be in mademoiselle’s suite so soon after the robbery.
“He may, if my suspicions have feet to stand on, have been out to learn what had been discovered, or was suspected, and what detectives were to be employed.
“This looks too good to me to be dropped without looking deeper, and I’ll snatch this opportunity for a peep at that sawbones’ rooms before I phone the chief. A throat specialist, eh? I’ll have him by the throat sooner or later, if I find I’m on the right track.”
Patsy was seeking the fourth floor while indulging in this hopeful train of thought. He ignored the elevator and quickly mounted the several stairways, and brought up at the door of Doctor Guelpa’s suite.
It then was half past six, and many of the guests had gone down to dinner. The long, luxuriously carpeted corridor was quiet and deserted, lighted only with an incandescent lamp here and there.
Patsy listened at the door for a moment. He could hear no sound from within, nor detect any evidence of a light.
“It’s a hundred to one the sawbones is out,” he muttered. “I can woolly eye that valet, all right, if he is here. I’ll pretend I’ve got a bad throat, trouble in my pipes, and that I want to consult his jags from Hungary. He’ll be a wise gazabo, all right, if I can’t fool him.”
Patsy was folding his handkerchief in the form of a bandage, which he then fastened around his neck, turning up his coat collar, much as if the advice and aid of a physician was really necessary. Putting on a look of abject misery that would have deceived a clairvoyant, he then knocked sharply on Doctor Guelpa’s door.
It brought no response from within.
Patsy listened intently, then knocked again, with the same negative result.
“Gee! that’s good enough for me,” he muttered. “It’s a cinch that both are out, and it’s me for the inside. I’ll make this door look like thirty cents.”
Patsy had it unlocked and opened in less than thirty seconds, at all events, and he then stepped into the entrance hall. A thick portière across an inner door was closely drawn. The room beyond was in darkness. Silence reigned in the gloomy suite.
Closing the hall door, Patsy groped his way to the other and found an electric switch key on the wall near the casing. He turned it and a flood of light revealed a handsomely furnished parlor, also the partly open doors of two adjoining bedrooms.
He could see through one of them a broad bed, with other sleeping-room furnishings, also two large trunks near one of the walls.
A roll-top desk in the parlor caught his eye. The cover was raised, and he turned in that direction.
“I’ll see what that contains, for a starter,” thought Patsy. “’Twas very good of him to leave it open. I’ll go through it like a shot through a gun. The drawers first and then——”
Then, on the contrary, the hurried search he had begun abruptly ended.
The silence was broken by a threatening command from behind him, a voice so curt and cold that no sane man would have ignored it.
“Cut that! Sit down in the chair, or you’ll drop on the floor in a condition you’ll not fancy.”
Patsy, kneeling at the desk, one of the drawers of which he had pulled open, swung round like a flash.
A tall, smoothly shaved, black-eyed man had stepped noiselessly from one of the bedrooms. There was murder in his eyes, also in his right hand.
It held a revolver, aimed point-blank at the crouching detective.