CHAPTER VI.
NICK’S SHREWD DEDUCTION.
Nick Carter read the distant sign with only indifferent interest.
“B. Ardley.”
Then, like a flash, the phonetic significance of it arose in his mind. He asked himself how it would sound if uttered aloud.
“B. Ardley,” he mentally repeated. “By Jove, that is almost like Beardly, if spoken quickly, or heard indistinctly. It must be that Patsy heard it in that way, since he could distinguish nothing more. He may have mistaken this name, B. Ardley, for Beardly. By gracious, it’s worth looking into.”
Nick’s face had reflected none of his thoughts.
Dugan still was lounging over the bar, waiting the further wishes of his unknown patron.
Nick glanced at him and remarked:
“This is a fine river, Mr. Dugan, from which a good deal of power must be derived. I see there are a number of mills farther up the stream and nearer the town. Sawmills, aren’t they?”
“Yes, sir, they are,” nodded Dugan.
“What’s that nearest one, that having a sign on top?”
“That’s not a sawmill. The man who runs that place works over old rubber and culls out the best of it. He makes it into rubber tubes and pipes.”
“What’s that name on the sign?”
“Ardley,” said Dugan unsuspiciously. “His name is Ben Ardley.”
“You’re acquainted with him, I suppose?”
“Well, not overmuch,” Dugan vouchsafed, with somewhat sharper scrutiny. “He ain’t the kind I fancy.”
“No?”
Dugan did not respond to the insinuating query. He seemed to go into his shell, as it were, and he didn’t speak again until Nick, after vainly waiting for him to do so, decided that he would not become too inquisitive. Instead, he remarked carelessly, as if the other topic had passed out of his mind:
“I suppose I must tramp to the town in order to get across the river.”
“No, you needn’t do that,” said Dugan. “There’s a ferry half a mile above here. You’ll see the sign in front of a small wooden house. The man who lives there will take you across. He keeps a boat for that purpose.”
“What’s his name?” questioned Nick.
“Jones. He’s all right. There’s a bridge, too, below here a couple of miles.”
“A bridge, eh?” thought Nick. “Does the other fork of the road lead to it?”
“Aye, it does,” nodded Dugan.
“I remember passing it,” said Nick, rising to go. “Well, I’ll be plugging along. It’ll be hot walking later in the day.”
“So ’twill, sir. Drop in again when you plug this way.”
“I will, Mr. Dugan,” Nick assured him.
He now detected a tinge of sarcasm in the man’s voice, nevertheless, but he departed without betraying it.
“I’ll be likely to drop in again sooner than you imagine, or will care to see me,” thought Nick, a bit grimly. “I reckon I have brought up quite close to my quarry. Those two rats ducked out of the barroom quite suddenly, I remember, and Dugan closed his trap in a rather abrupt and significant way. I’ll skin over the river and size up Mr. Ben Ardley. That may prove more profitable than hunting farther for Beardly.”
Nick trudged on up the road, which followed the course of the river, and he presently arrived at the home of the ferryman, which was among the first of scattered dwellings which now appeared on that side of the stream.
Jones was up and out for business, it then being after seven o’clock, and Nick accompanied him down to the river bank, where they boarded a broad, flat-bottomed boat, which Jones operated with no other power than his own gaunt figure and wiry arms applied to a pair of oars.
“I stopped at Dugan’s place back yonder for a drink,” Nick remarked, when they were under way. “He seems to be a decent chap.”
Jones was not communicative. No man can say less than a rustic, when so inclined.
“Decent enough,” he allowed, in nasal tones.
“He keeps boarders, doesn’t he?” Nick inquired.
“Reckon not.”
“But I saw two men there, named Morley and Conroy.”
“Never heard of them.”
“That’s so?”
“Yep.”
Jones gazed vacantly at his cowhide boots.
Nick decided to try him on another tack.
“Do you do much business here?” he asked agreeably.
“Some,” said Jones.
“Taken any strangers over lately?”
“One.”
“Man or woman?”
“A she.”
“When was that?”
“Last Friday.”
“Three days ago,” thought Nick, a bit amused. “He’s not getting rich at that canter with this old tub. It would take a corkscrew, moreover, to draw anything out of him. I’ll try once more.”
“Who runs that place a quarter mile down the stream?” he inquired.
“Sign’s on the building,” said Jones, rowing steadily and vigorously.
“I cannot read it at this distance.”
“Name’s Ardley.”
“Do you know him.”
“Yep.”
“Anything about him?”
“Nope.”
“Does he employ any help?”
“Wife. No one else. Lookin’ for a job?”
“By Jove, he’s loosening up,” thought Nick, laughing inwardly.
Further inquiries evoked nothing of any importance from the taciturn ferryman, however, who landed his passenger, accepted his fee with a grin, and immediately pushed off his rude craft and started to return.
Nick found himself at the end of a narrow lane, about a stone’s throw from two small dwellings, and he rightly inferred that it led to a more pretentious road running through the woodland farther back from the river. He arrived at it a few minutes later, then turned his steps in the direction of the Ardley place. A walk of a quarter mile brought him to a narrow road leading down to it.
Nick then paused and took from his pocket four pieces of the blue veil, which he had retained after picking them up on the opposite side of the river.
“If Chick has found any since we parted, and if my suspicions are correct, he by this time has crossed the bridge mentioned by Dugan, and he must be coming in this direction. I’ll leave a trail for him that he can not mistake. If he finds four pieces of the veil here, instead of one, he will reason that I must have put them here, for the girl would not have dropped four in one spot. That will show him the way.”
Nick dropped one blue fragment in the middle of the main road.
He then placed the other three where they could not be overlooked, and in a line plainly denoting the direction he was about to take. He lingered only to carefully put on a disguise which he thought would serve his purpose.
“Now, for Mr. Ardley,” he said to himself, striding rapidly down the diverging road.
Something like three hundred yards through the woods brought him to a clearing back of the dwelling of the now suspected man. Off to the right was the faded old building used for his rubber business. One end of the clearing was covered with old boxes, barrels, and a huge pile of refuse.
Beyond the building, which was close upon the bank of the river, could be seen one end of a deep wooden sluice, in which revolved the wheel from which Ardley evidently derived the power to operate machinery of some kind.
Nick could hear no sound of any, however, though the dash and gurgle of water through the sluice faintly reached his ears.
As he came nearer the house, a brawny, hard-featured woman of middle age appeared at the back door. Her large, angular figure was clad in a calico wrapper, much the worse for dirt and wear.
“Is Mr. Ardley at home?” Nick inquired, pausing to question her.
“He’s out in the shop,” she replied, in rasping, nasal tones.
“Is he busy?”
“He’s allas busy.”
“Any one with him?”
“No. He’s alone. You’ll find him.”
“You can bet I’ll find him,” thought Nick, far from favorably impressed with the woman. “She must be the wife Jones mentioned. She looks as if she had done her share of hard work, and looks like a hard ticket, as well.”
Nick presently found the man, and his impression of the woman faded to utter insignificance. He discovered him in one end of the building, that nearest the river, evidently engaged in repairing a leather belt which hung over a wheel of part of the overhead machinery, and for a moment Nick was fairly startled by his appearance.
For Ardley was a giant in stature, a huge, hulky, red-featured man of about fifty, with a mop of hair that hung like a lion’s mane over his brow and ears. He was a type before which ordinary men wilt away to utter insignificance.
He was clad in coarse overalls, huge cowhide boots, and a thick woolen shirt, so open in front as to expose his massive neck and his great, bulging chest, covered with scraggly hair. His sleeves were rolled above his elbows, revealing a pair of brawny forearms, knotted with thick muscles and as large around as a ham.
He was, in fact, as prodigious and powerful and in a way as repulsive a man as Nick Carter ever had seen.
It was not in the detective’s nature, nevertheless, to be deterred from his purpose by this ominous aspect of the man. He saw at a glance that he was a good deal of a boor and a brute. He saw, too, that he was gifted with no art to disguise his feelings and resort to subterfuge, if caught unprepared for an accusation; and, now seriously suspecting that he knew something about the crime of the previous night, Nick resolved to bring him up to the ringbolt then and there.
Ardley’s huge face was purple from his exertions with the heavy belt, when, hearing the detective’s footsteps on the floor, he turned and saw him.
“Hello!” he cried, with a leonine growl, as if surprised.
“How are you?” returned Nick complacently.
“What d’ye want?”
“You are Mr. Ardley, I suppose?”
“Yes. What d’ye want?”
“I want to talk with you for a few minutes,” said Nick. “It’s on important business. My name is Hudson. You are not too busy, I hope.”
“Too busy!” Ardley echoed the words with a fierce, derisive snarl. “I ain’t busy only with this cussed belt. That can wait. Sure you can talk with me, Mr. Hudson.”
“Good enough.”
“I’m never too busy to talk along with a gentleman. Important business, eh? What’s it all about? Sit there, Mr. Hudson.”
Ardley, with his sonorous voice rolling forth more heartily, as deep and full as the bellow of a bull, pointed to a cheap wooden chair, near which the detective was standing.
Nick accepted the invitation unsuspiciously.
Ardley seated himself on an empty box directly in front of his visitor, scarce five feet from him. With his shoulders hunched forward, his huge head drawn down, his muscle-bound arms resting on his massive thighs, he appeared more like a great, uncouth monster than of the order of man.
“What’s it all about?” he repeated, gazing with ratty eyes at the detective’s bearded face. “What’s it all about, this ’ere important business?”
“It’s about a girl who was stolen from home last night by a bunch of thugs,” said Nick, steadily eying him. “I have reason to believe they came in this direction.”
“Suppose they did?” questioned Ardley. “What’s that to me? Why d’ye question me?”
“I hoped you might have seen them.”
“Waal, you’ve got another hope.
“Or know something about them,” Nick added.
“What I know about them, Mr. Hudson, or about anything else bar the making of rubber pipes, could be written on your thumb nail,” Ardley growled, still gazing at his hearer. “I dunno anything about any thugs, much less a stolen gal.”
“Don’t you know a man named Pierre Toulon?” Nick asked, with sharper scrutiny.
“Never heard of him.”
“Or David Margate?”
“Same of him. I never heard the name.”
Nick drew up a little in his chair, working one of his revolvers into a position in his hip pocket, enabling him to instantly draw it, if necessary.
“I noticed when coming here, Mr. Ardley, that you have a telephone in your house,” said he.
“Aye, I have,” Ardley admitted, with a nod of his huge head. “What o’ that?”
“Well, I happen to know,” Nick bluntly asserted, “that Pierre Toulon telephoned to you from New York City at one o’clock last night.”
Ardley’s red eyes took on a narrow squint. He reached out and rested his brawny hand on a long wooden lever, which appeared to govern the wheel over which ran the belt on which Nick had found him at work. At the same time he asked, more sullenly:
“How’d you find that out?”
“I have methods of my own for obtaining information,” said Nick.
“You’re a detective, eh?”
“Yes.”
“I reckoned so.”
“My statement is true, isn’t it?” Nick demanded, more sternly.
“Suppose it is?” growled Ardley. “What then?”
“I want the truth from you, then, both about Pierre Toulon and the stolen girl. I intend to have it, too.”
“Suppose you don’t get it?”
“I will arrest you at once, Ardley, and take you with me,” Nick forcibly informed him.
Ardley laughed derisively.
“I guess not,” he cried.
“You have got another guess, Ardley, unless you——”
“So have you!”
Ardley had not stirred from his indifferent position until that moment, the position of a man who appeared to have no aggressive design, but who was content to rely confidently upon his prodigious strength.
With the interruption, however, his hand closed quickly on the wooden lever, which moved like a flash to one side under the swift action of his powerful arm.
Instantly a section of the floor under the detective’s chair fell straight downward, swinging on hinges like a trapdoor.
It was like having the earth itself drop from under him. Coming without the slightest warning, finding him utterly unprepared for such a trick, Nick had neither time nor means by which to collect himself, or to avoid the inevitable fall.
Like a flash, together with the chair on which he was seated, Nick vanished through the floor and sped downward through empty space.
The trapdoor swung upward like a pendulum, and Ardley, venting a roar of mingled triumph and derision, jerked it back in its former position and secured it with the lever.