CHAPTER V.
PATSY SEES A GHOST.
Patsy Garvan had moved nearly as quickly as his quarry. It had taken him only a few moments to scale the high brick wall and assure himself that the inclosed grounds were deserted, it then being evident that Garside had entered the grim old house.
Still proceeding cautiously, nevertheless, Patsy crept from under the wall and approached the lighted window. He then saw that it was protected with vertical iron bars, like that of a jail, as were the other windows on the ground floor.
The spring roller of the curtain was set at the bottom of the window, moreover, the shade drawing upward by means of a cord running through a pulley in the top of the casing. It was drawn up to about two inches from the top, and the upper section of the window was open about the same distance, obviously for ventilation.
Patsy tried vainly to peer between the curtain and the casing. The iron bars precluded his getting his head near enough to the sashes to obtain any view of the interior of the room. Indistinctly, however, he could hear the sound of voices from within, but could not distinguish what was said.
“Gee, there’s nothing to it!” he murmured, drawing back and gazing up at the narrow opening through which the faint sounds evidently came. “I must get up there and have one look, at least. I then could hear, too, all that may be said. I’ll take a chance with these bars, by thunder, let come what may.”
Grasping two of them, Patsy found that they were firmly fixed in the stonework. Drawing himself up until he could place his feet on the stone sill, which was about four feet from the ground, he then stood erect and found that his eyes came directly opposite the opening at the top of the window.
Pressing nearer, still clutching the bars in order to maintain his position, with his sturdy figure outlined like a black silhouette against the lighted curtain, Patsy gazed cautiously into the room, with ears alert to catch every word that was uttered.
The room, like the exterior of the house, presented an appearance of remarkable solidarity. Huge timbers supported the dark oak ceiling, smoke-begrimed and defaced with age.
Two of the wainscoted walls were flanked with deep shelves, filled with bottles, vials, jugs, carboys, and no end of paraphernalia required in a chemist’s laboratory.
A zinc-covered table occupied one side of the room. It was littered with like articles. A Bunsen burner was in operation under a retort held in a tripod, and in which a dark fluid was bubbling furiously, while drops of distillation fell slowly from the end of a metal coil into a vial placed to receive them.
All this was visible in the white light from several electric lamps, as were the faces and figures of the three occupants of the spacious room, which obviously was a chemist’s laboratory.
One was a gaunt, angular man of nearly sixty, with a wrinkled, hard-featured face, thin lips, and a square jaw, a hooked nose and sunken eyes, that gleamed and glittered venomously in their cavernous sockets.
It was, plainly enough, the face of a man whose life had been a continuous round, not of enjoyments, but of disappointments, until his nature had soured and his soul rebelled, and early ambition died from his calloused heart.
Another was a woman of about the same age and of much the same aspect, as if she had been the partner of his vain hopes and consequent woes, as indeed she had. Both were cheaply and carelessly clad, bordering close upon slovenly. They were seated on common wooden chairs near the zinc-covered table.
All this paled to utter insignificance, however, in view of Patsy Garvan’s overwhelming amazement when his gaze fell upon the third person in the room. He was utterly nonplused. He could, as he afterward said, have been knocked toes up with a feather.
There was no mistaking the man, no possibility of error. The error had been made more than twelve months before.
The man was Garside—and not Garside.
His neatly plastered hair was lying on the table, also his flowing mustache and carefully trimmed beard—as artistic and effective a disguise as ever adorned the face of a stage star, or blinded the searching scrutiny of a detective to the sinister features of a crook.
He was seated directly opposite the couple described. He evidently had removed his disguise because of the heat in the room. With his thin, clean-cut features and his own close-cut hair, a more pronounced change could scarce be imagined.
For this man now had become, and in reality was—a veritable personal counterfeit of the man for whom he had been acting as a private secretary for more than three months, and in whose home he had been dwelling unsuspected—a living likeness of Chester Clayton himself.
One glance convinced Patsy Garvan of his identity, though it was like seeing a ghost, the dead alive—the man who was supposed to have been killed by a bullet from Chick Carter’s revolver, or to have been drowned in the swirling current of a stream in the Berkshire Hills.
This was the man who twice had conspired against Chester Clayton, who twice had been thwarted by Nick Carter and his assistants, the man whose true history and twin kinship with Clayton was known only by Nick and the mother then lying bereft of memory and speech in the banker’s mansion.
“Great guns!” gasped Patsy, staggered beyond description. “Have my lamps gone wrong? Is my bean twisted? That’s Chester Clayton’s double, Dave Margate, alive, too, as sure as I’m a foot high. He wasn’t drowned, then, as we supposed, nor did Chick’s bullet kill him. But it hit him, all right, and left its mark. Gee whiz! that’s what Madame Clayton meant by those two words—the scar! the scar! Holy smoke! this sure sheds new light on the case.”
It was plainly visible, in the bright light that fell upon his head—a scar running like a clean-cut white mark through his dark hair, and extending nearly over the top of his head.
It told plainly, too, where Chick’s bullet had struck him, glancing from the skull without causing a fracture, but depriving him of consciousness and causing him to pitch headlong into the river, the chill of which must have quickly revived him, enabling him to escape drowning and elude discovery, though by what means Patsy could not then conjecture.
Nor was he then inclined to speculate upon it, or concerning the other features of that sensational case of months before; for that then engaging him was of paramount importance, and, despite his momentary amazement upon beholding Margate alive, by which name he now will be designated, Patsy had been alert to catch every word of the intercourse then in progress.
“Where is Dunbar? Where is Haley? Why aren’t they here, Busby, in case of need?”
These were the first words to reach Patsy’s ears, uttered with feverish impatience by David Margate, and confirming the former’s suspicion as to the identity of the occupant of the house.
“Dunbar—Clayton’s former secretary,” thought Patsy. “There is a bigger gang and been more doing, by Jove, than the chief suspects.”
Busby shook his head, replying with a rasping snarl:
“How can I tell you where they are? Neither has been here since morning.”
“Do you know, Nancy?” Margate demanded, turning to the woman.
“No, Dave, I don’t,” she replied. “They went out about noon.”
“But why are you here?” Busby questioned suspiciously. “What sent you at this hour? Is anything wrong?”
“Wrong enough,” Margate said, with asperity. “We are up against it, Busby, good and strong.”
“Up against what?”
“Suspicion.”
“Suspicion!” Busby lurched forward in his chair. “Not—not Nick Carter?”
“That’s what.”
“But you told me yesterday——”
“What I told you yesterday cuts no ice, Busby, in view of what I have overheard to-night,” Margate curtly interrupted.
“What d’ye mean?”
“I mean that I’ve been buncoed by the infernal sleuth. He has served me one of his devilish tricks. He pretended to swallow all that I handed him three nights ago, and I was fool enough to believe him. Luckily, however, I got wise to-night without his suspecting it. I’ll pay him off with his own coin. I’ll queer his present game, in spite of his scurvy ruse, and hand him goods of another color.”
Busby’s parchment-hued face had taken on a look of apprehension and anxiety, while that of his wife lost its last vestige of color.
“Does he suspect your identity?” questioned Busby.
“No, not for a moment.”
“Or me?”
“No, nor you,” Margate assured him. “You are out of it entirely.”
“Thank God for that,” Busby fervently exclaimed. “I should never have gone into the cursed job. It was too long a chance.”
“But having gone into it, Busby, you cannot safely back out,” Margate said curtly. “Besides, you ought not wish to, Busby, with a million or more at stake. As for it’s being a long chance—rats! No chance is too long for me to take. I’ll make good, too, in spite of Carter and all of his kennel.”
“Do you think so?”
“I know so.”
“Why were you so upset, then, when you entered?”
“I was mad with myself, disgusted with myself, for having been blinded by the infernal meddler,” Margate declared, with a growl. “I ought to have suspected it, ought to have known he would suspect me and serve me some crafty trick. Twice burned, one surely should fear the fire. I ought to have been on my guard. Listen. I’ll tell you what I overheard to-night.”
Busby listened without interrupting, also the woman, and Margate quickly informed them of the interview between Nick Carter and Clayton.
“That’s all,” he said, in conclusion. “It’s enough, too, but it don’t break the camel’s back. Not by a long chalk.”
“Enough is right, Dave,” Busby now said grimly. “He suspects you, or he would not have questioned Clayton about you.”
“Nor have made that crack about Clayton’s illness coming on soon after he employed me.”
“Do you think he suspects your game?”
“No, not for a moment,” Margate asserted confidently. “How can he suspect it, Busby, supposing me to be dead?”
“That’s true. Nor that Dunbar threw up his job in order that you might slip in there?”
“Carter does not dream of that.”
“He soon will, all right, and something more than dream of it,” thought Patsy, elated by the important discoveries he was making.
“Nor does he suspect that Mattie Dryden is in love with me and obeying my every command,” Margate forcibly added. “It has simplified matters, my having the nurse under my thumb and willing to go the limit for my sake. I doubt that I could have found opportunities to secretly drug the old woman and keep her tongue-tied until we can pull off our deeper game. It’s dead easy for Mattie to do, however, without incurring suspicion.”
“But how did Carter get wise to our use of scopolamine?”
“That’s only a guess on his part,” Margate declared.
“He’s an infernally good guesser, then, and it puts us in bad,” growled Busby.
“Bad enough, I’ll admit; but there’s a way out.”
“Not if he brings that Philadelphia physician to the house, Dave, and——”
“Rot!” snapped Margate, interrupting. “Do you suppose for a moment, Busby, that I’m to be thwarted at this stage of the game?”
“But how can you prevent it?”
“I’ll prevent it, all right. Carter does not suspect my identity. Nor does Clayton, nor his wife, nor her father. I have fooled them all for three full months. Am I now to be balked, when all was ripe to have turned the final trick, if the prying eyes of that old jade had not lit upon the truth? No, no, Busby, not on your life. I’ll play the game to a finish. I’ll get away with a million of Clayton’s fortune. Nick Carter, nor the devil himself, shall not prevent me.”
“But he will bring in that physician, Dave, as sure as fate,” Busby apprehensively insisted.
“Little good that will do him.”
“There’s another contingency, also. Even if the physician fails to detect traces of scopolamine, Carter then may begin to watch the woman, or the nurse, or——”
“No, he’ll not, Busby.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Because, blast him, he’ll have no woman to watch,” Margate cried, with more vicious vehemence.
“No woman to watch!” Busby stared at him. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean what I say,” Margate came back at him. “I’ll tell you how it can be done. That’s why I am here to-night. I’ll beat Carter at his own game. Never again shall he foil my designs. The stake is too big for me to cry quits at this stage of the game. I’ll fool him, Busby. I’ll knock his present game on the head. I’ll tell you how it can be done.”
“Go ahead, you rascal, and tell me, also,” thought Patsy, ears alert. “I then will land you rats where you belong. Go ahead and——”
But Patsy’s train of thought ended as abruptly as it had begun.
It was cut short by a voice from behind him, that of a man who, with a companion, had quietly entered from the street a few moments before, so quietly that Patsy had not heard them. They had caught sight of his sturdy figure in black relief against the glow on the curtained window.
“Come down here, stranger, and come down with your hands up!” he cried sharply. “If you reach for a gun, or show fight, we’ll croak you on the instant. Come down here, I say, and be quick about it.”