CHAPTER VI.
A PIECE OF PLASTER.
It was after four o’clock when Patsy Garvan emerged into Madison Avenue to begin the work assigned him, starting from home somewhat in advance of Nick and Chick, and heading immediately for Forty-fourth Street.
“It’s no dead open-and-shut cinch where to find a blackbird as fly as Cora Cavendish at this hour of the day,” he said to himself. “She may be taking in a matinée, or the movies, or having a spin with some gink in a buzz car. I’ll tackle her apartments in the Nordeck, for a starter, and if I can learn nothing there, or from the office clerk—well, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. I sure have got to find her by some hook or crook.”
Ten minutes brought Patsy to his destination, an apartment house in Forty-fourth Street, patronized largely by women of the same social status as his quarry. He entered the office on the street floor, when, with a thrill of satisfaction, he beheld the very woman he was seeking.
“Gee, this is going some!” he mentally exclaimed. “There she is, now, and rigged for the street. I’ll buy a cigar, at least, as a blind for butting in here.”
Although in disguise and quite sure that the woman did not know him by sight, even, Patsy reasoned that any unusual incident might arouse her misgivings, if she really was engaged in the knavery Nick suspected.
Patsy sauntered to a cigar case near the clerk’s desk, therefore, and made his purchase without another glance at the woman.
Cora Cavendish was emerging from the elevator when Patsy entered. She was a tall, slender woman close upon thirty, with an abundance of bleached hair, thin features, a rather pretty face aside from its paleness, and a certain sinister and crafty expression in her gray eyes. She was fashionably clad and was drawing on a pair of long, lavender kid gloves.
Passing within three feet of Patsy, and wafting to his nostrils a pronounced aroma of heliotrope sachet, she paused for a moment and said to the clerk, with a quick and somewhat metallic voice:
“If Guy Morton shows up and asks for me, Mr. Hardy, tell him I’ll return in twenty minutes.”
“All right, Miss Cavendish,” nodded the clerk. “I’ll bear it in mind.”
“I have a date with him,” Cora added. “But he may tire of waiting and come looking for me.”
“Tire of waiting for you—impossible!” Hardy observed, with a grin.
“Oh, quit your kidding!” retorted the woman, laughing. “You hand him my message, Hardy, and give him the key to my suite.”
“I’ll do so, Cora.”
“Good for you. Tell him to wait, mind you.”
“No need to tell him that,” Hardy returned, as the woman swept out of the office.
Patsy already had left the counter after lighting his cigar, and he passed out only a few yards behind the woman.
“Now, by Jove, if she doesn’t take a taxi, I shall have soft walking,” he said to himself. “Guy Morton, eh? I never heard of him. When I see him, if so lucky, I may possibly know his face.”
Patsy’s wish was granted, in that Cora Cavendish did not take a conveyance. She walked briskly through Forty-fourth Street to Sixth Avenue, then turned north and increased her pace, gliding with a sort of sinuous grace through the throng of pedestrians.
“Gee! she’s in some hurry,” thought Patsy, at a discreet distance behind her. “If she can go to keep a date with the said Morton and return to her apartments in twenty minutes, she cannot be going very far. To some other hotel, perhaps, or some saloon with a side door for the fair sex.”
Patsy had hit the nail very nearly on the head. A few minutes later he saw his quarry enter a popular café in one of the side streets, where she paused and questioned a man seated at a high desk near the door.
She evidently obtained the information she wanted. For, passing directly through the place, Cora entered one of the several private dining rooms in the rear, quickly closing the door.
It was not done so quickly, however, as to prevent Patsy, who had immediately stepped into the front saloon, from getting a momentary glimpse of the interior of the private room.
He saw that the lace-draped window was partly open, that a man answering Nick’s description of Hawley was seated at a damask-covered table, and that on the latter stood a bottle of wine, partly drank, and two glasses. He also saw, nevertheless, that there was no other occupant of the room.
“He’s still waiting for her,” he reasoned. “Waiting for her with an extra glass. That’s the reporter Nick described, as sure as I’m a foot high, and probably Deland himself. I’ll mighty soon find out.”
Patsy turned and found the man at the desk eying him suspiciously, and he took no chance of a subsequent warning being sent to the suspected couple, but immediately seized the bull by the horns. Stepping close to the desk, he displayed his detective badge and said quietly, but in a way he knew would be effective:
“I am in Nick Carter’s employ, and I happen to know that you are the man who runs this place. If you wish to continue running it, you hand me straight goods and keep your trap closed. Whom has Cora Cavendish gone in there to meet?”
The change that came over the man’s face convinced Patsy that he needed to say nothing more threatening. The mention of Nick Carter’s name had been enough. The man at once replied, moreover, with lowered voice:
“I’ll not yip; not on your life. She has joined a man named Morton. He’s been waiting for her.”
“How long?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Nothing; not a thing. Both come here now and then to lunch, or to buy wine. I have known the woman for a time, but not the man.”
“Is either adjoining dining room vacant?”
“Yes, both of them.”
“I’ll go into the one on the right,” said Patsy, with a glance at the several closed doors. “Call that waiter away, so he’ll not be butting in there.”
“You mean into your room?”
“That’s what. Let him serve the couple, if they order anything, but you make sure that he doesn’t put them wise to me, or to anything else, or your license will go so high in the air you could not see it with the Lick telescope.”
The proprietor actually turned pale, so impressive was Patsy, and he muttered quickly:
“You leave it to me. I’ll fix the waiter, all right. Go ahead as soon as you please.”
“Gee! I’ve got him well muzzled,” thought Patsy, now seeking the adjoining dining room. “He looks as if I already had put his place on the blink. He wouldn’t dare say his soul’s his own. Now, by Jove, I must get in unheard.”
Patsy opened and closed the door noiselessly, entering the room. It was like that occupied by Cora Cavendish and her companion, but the plastered wall between the two rooms precluded playing the eavesdropper in that direction.
Turning to the window, therefore, Patsy began to raise it by slow degrees until he could lean out cautiously. He then found that the other window was only four feet away, and through the opening, for it had been raised several inches for ventilation, he could hear the voices of the suspected couple.
One object caught his eye, moreover, that alone served to confirm the theory Nick had formed.
Cora Cavendish had taken a chair, but had drawn it away from the table. She was seated close to the open window. She had removed her long lavender gloves and her left arm was rested on the window sill, her fingers toying with the lace draperies.
Between the filmy curtains Patsy caught sight of her hand and arm, bare nearly to the elbow.
On the fleshy part of it, directly over one of the blueish veins, was nearly a square inch of pink court plaster.
“By gracious, that clinches it!” thought Patsy. “The chief is right. That plaster covers the cut from which some blood was taken. Give us time, now, and we’ll surely deliver the goods.”
In the meantime, with ears alert, he could hear Cora Cavendish saying a bit sharply, as if irritated:
“I cannot be in two places at once, can I? Cut out your kicking and get down to business. I came here as soon as I could after doing the other job.”
“Well, what’s the result?” demanded her companion curtly. “Did you see him?”
“Gee! that’s Deland’s voice, all right,” thought Patsy. “He is not disguising it, now, and there’s no mistaking it.”
“Sure I saw him,” said Cora, still snappishly.
“What did he say?”
“What you’ll not like to hear, Mortie, take it from me.”
“Use my other name, you fool! I’m not looking for a free ride up the river.”
“None can hear us in this place,” said Cora, less petulantly. “I’ll tell you what he said, Guy. He called me down in good shape, along with all the rest of us, over my shoulder. He’s up in the air a mile.”
“He’ll come down,” said Deland, with sinister coldness.
“Don’t be so sure of it.”
“I’ll find a way to bring him down, then.”
“He’s nursing an awful kick.”
“He’ll kick against a brick wall, Cora, in that case,” Deland said, with an icy assurance that Patsy readily remembered. “I’ll puncture his tires so quickly that he’ll turn turtle.”
“Well, mebbe so,” allowed the woman doubtfully.
“What more did he say?” Deland continued. “Did you get any part of the coin?”
“Not a copper of it,” said Cora curtly.
“Why was that?”
“He says that he won’t settle.”
“Won’t settle!”
Patsy heard Deland’s teeth meet with a sudden fierce snap.
“That’s what he said, Guy, and he as good as fired me out of the crib,” replied Cora inelegantly. “You’ll have to see him yourself if you——”
“See him—you bet I’ll see him,” Deland broke forth in tones that would have chilled an ordinary hearer. “I’ll see him, all right, and I’ll lose no time about it.”
“What need of rushing things?”
“Need enough.”
“Why? Won’t it keep?”
“No, hang it, nothing keeps when that infernal sleuth takes up a case,” Deland snarled viciously. “You don’t yet know what has happened.”
“Sleuth—what sleuth?” Cora’s arm vanished like a flash from Patsy’s cautious gaze, when she swung round in her chair. “You don’t mean——”
“You ought to guess what I mean, Cora, and whom.”
“Not—not Nick Carter?”
“Yes. May the devil get him—and I’ll help him do so.”
“What has occurred?” Cora demanded, voice quaking.
“Carter began an investigation this morning,” Deland now informed her. “I was there in disguise to learn who was put on the case and what was suspected. Phelan, the headquarters man, was the first to show up, and he played dead easy into our hands.”
“He got after Gordon?”
“He sent a gun to get him, and I now know that Gordon was arrested and taken down to headquarters, along with the evidence against him.”
“Why are you so stewed, then? That ought to be good enough.”
“So it would be—if it had lasted!” snapped Deland.
“Lasted—what do you mean?”
“I mean that Carter showed up at the house a little later and had a look at things,” Deland explained. “He didn’t know me from a side of leather, but he refused to let me in or to put me wise to what he suspected. He flew down to headquarters, instead, and Gordon was liberated.”
“Is that so?”
“When Carter returned he told the reporters that there had been no arrest, and that the whole business in so far as Gordon was concerned was a mistake.”
“That looks mighty bad,” said Cora, after a moment. “How do you size it up?”
“Hang the cursed dick, Cora, there’s only one way to size it up,” Deland again replied, with a snarl. “Carter got wise to something, enough to warrant his taking the chance of liberating Gordon.”
“That’s evident enough.”
“I then decided to bolt. I thought he might light on me next. That’s why I’m stewed and so hot around the collar,” Deland went on, with bitter ferocity.
“But this job——”
“The job must be wound up at once,” snapped Deland, again interrupting. “We must have that promised coin before Carter can get in his work. Won’t settle, eh? By heavens, I’ll soon see whether he’ll settle. He’ll settle, all right, or he’ll hear something drop.”
“But——”
“There aren’t any buts to it,” Deland fiercely insisted. “This trick must be turned and turned at once. Did you leave him at home?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’ll get after him, then, and bring him down to cases. You move lively, too, and get next to Flynn. Tell him where I have gone and that I may need help. Send Plugger out there with Daggett and Tobey. Tell them to nose round till they find out what’s doing. Come on at once. There’s no time to lose.”
Patsy Garvan heard the viciously determined rascal push back his chair from the table with a violence that upset one of the glasses and broke it. The tinkling of the falling glass easily reached his ears, and in another moment he heard the couple hurriedly leaving the room.
“Gee! he’s off with blood in his eye, all right,” thought Patsy. “He must have been talking about Jack Madison, though it’s no dead-sure thing. I’ll follow him and find out. Plugger Flynn, eh? So he was in the job, along with Jim Daggett and Buck Tobey, three fine East Side blacklegs. Thundering guns! I’m on the hind seat of the wagon, but I don’t believe they can shake me.”
The last arose in his mind when, emerging from the private dining room, he discovered that Deland and Cora Cavendish already were passing into the street, in which the daylight of the October afternoon was merging into dusk.
Seeing that neither of the suspects was looking back, however, Patsy darted after them and quickly reached the street.
Deland was springing into a taxicab, and in another moment he was riding rapidly away, so rapidly that pursuit was out of the question.
Cora Cavendish paused briefly on the curbing to watch the swiftly departing car, and then she turned abruptly and hurried away.
“Hang it! I’ve lost him temporarily, at least, do what I might,” Patsy muttered. “There’s nothing to it, now. I have only one string to my bow. I will follow the woman.”