Patsy Garvan needed no instructions beyond those contained in Nick Carter’s note, nor additional information as to the position Kate Crandall had taken. It was plain enough to Patsy, and he shaped his course accordingly.
Knowing that the woman might incidentally have seen him from her window, and that she would recall him suspiciously if they met later, Patsy entered the corridor of a near building and put on a disguise with which he was provided. It by no means improved him, however, for it gave him a decidedly tough and hangdog appearance.
“It’s good enough for the work to be done,” he tersely soliloquized, not anticipating how effectively it was to serve him.
Returning to the street, Patsy found a concealment from which he could stealthily watch the door of the bank building, prepared to await the departure of Kate Crandall or size up any visitor she might receive. His vigil was not rewarded until five o’clock, when Kate came out and walked quickly up the street.
“Gee! she’s a peach, all right,” thought Patsy sententiously, who until then had had merely a glimpse at her through her office window. “She evidently has quit work for the day and is heading for home.”
Patsy, was right. He also inferred from the woman’s darkly handsome face that she was not in an enviable frame of mind. He stealthily followed her out of the business district and to an attractive outskirt of the town. There, just as she was turning a corner, a well-dressed man stepped from a near yard and spoke to her.
Patsy saw her draw back, as if confronted by a stranger, and then he saw the man’s face, and recognized him.
“Holy smoke!” he muttered, slinking back of a tree. “This does settle it. That’s Turk Magill, gangster and all-around bad egg, as sure as I’m a foot high. She just about employed him to get the gospel dispenser and—no, by Jove, she don’t appear to know him. I must be wrong.”
Cautiously watching them, Patsy presently decided that he was right, and that Kate Crandall was not acquainted with Turk Magill. She remained talking with him, nevertheless, frowning darkly while likening to his earnest utterances, yet occasionally glancing apprehensively toward a house around the corner.
“Gee! he’s got something on her,” thought Patsy, after a few moments. “That’s dead open and shut, or she wouldn’t listen to him. She’s doing so under protest; that’s a cinch.”
Magill was a well-built, florid man, a thousand times more prepossessing externally than within, and Patsy quickly saw that the rascal’s arguments, persuasion, or of whatever his talk consisted, would not immediately prove effective.
He saw, too, that he could not directly approach the couple without incurring suspicion, but that he might hasten around the square and approach them through the other street, possibly getting a line on their talk by passing near them.
“It’s worth trying,” he said to himself. “The woman, at least, cannot give me the slip.”
Patsy did not defer this move. Sheltered by the tree then hiding him, he retraced his steps and darted through a near street, presently rounding the square and sauntering toward the couple from the other direction. While he still was some fifty yards away, however, Kate Crandall abruptly left Magill and hastened to the dwelling at which she had repeatedly glanced.
Patsy rightly inferred that it was where she boarded. He passed her just as she was entering the gate, noting that she looked pale and disturbed, and had an ugly gleam in her black eyes.
Patsy also saw that Magill was watching her from around the corner and knowing the utterly depraved and desperate character of the crook, he instantly adopted a ruse that he thought might prove profitable and enable him to get a line on the game Magill was playing.
Though he heard Kate enter the house and close the door, Patsy repeatedly glanced back over his shoulder, as if hard hit with her flashy style and personal beauty.
Upon turning the corner and coming face to face with Magill, however, Patsy pretended to see him for the first time, and to realize that his own covert admiration of the woman had been detected. He grinned, remarking rudely, as if by way of explanation:
“Don’t often see one like her. Lucky for me she went under cover, or I’d have got a crook in my neck looking backward.”
Magill looked at him sharply. It was then that Patsy’s hangdog disguise proved advantageous. Magill saw, that he was not going to stop, or so it appeared, and he said quickly:
“Wait a bit!”
“Wait for what?” questioned Patsy, pausing.
Magill eyed him searchingly for several seconds “You’d wait for the skirt, wouldn’t you?” he asked, with unmistakable significance.
Patsy grinned again expressively.
“Rather!” said he. “I’d wait for her till I hadn’t a leg to stand on.”
“You might do worse, pal,” said Magill suggestively.
“You mean I couldn’t do better,” returned Patsy. “But I’m not in the class with swell skirts like her.”
“She’s not so swell.”
“Isn’t she?”
Patsy looked surprised and his eyes took on a light well in keeping with his disguised countenance. He now shrewdly surmised that Magill had a use for him, that he had designs that he could not carry out alone, and that he needed a confederate. This suited Patsy to the letter. He added incredulously, nevertheless, lest his inference and readiness might be suspected:
“That don’t go down. There’s nothing in it—nothing for me.”
“Think not?”
“That’s what.”
“I can put you in a way to become friendly with her,” said Magill, with squinting scrutiny.
“You can?” Patsy demanded.
“Surest thing you know. But you’d have to take chances,” Magill pointedly added.
“Chances, eh? Chances cut no ice with me. I’d take the longest ever.”
“Is that right?” asked Magill, smiling.
“Try me and see,” said Patsy; then abruptly: “Say, what’s your game? You ain’t stringing me along in this fashion for nothing.”
“I’m trying to get your measure,” Magill frankly admitted.
“Is that so?” Patsy spoke with affected resentment. “What do you want of it? How do you like it, as far as you’ve got?”
“You look all right,” Magill vouchsafed dryly.
“Well, I ain’t dolled up for anything,” Patsy bluntly asserted. “I’m just as you see me, all on the surface. Take it or leave it. It’s up to you.”
Magill was favorably impressed, and he waxed confidential.
“See here, pal, what’s your name?” he inquired.
“Jack Dolan,” said Patsy readily.
“Do you hang out around here?”
“Not so far away I can’t hoof it.”
“What’s your business?”
“Chauffeur—when I’m in on a job,” said Patsy, at random, but he again shot luckily. “I’m looking for one just now, but not looking too hard.”
“Would you take a mighty soft one?” Magill questioned.
“Would a duck swim?”
“And take chances?”
“Any you’ll take,” said Patsy. “You can gamble on that.”
“If I can gamble safely on it,” Magill replied, “I can put you on easy street, and do it without much risk.”
“You can, eh?”
“Believe me—I can!”
“Say, you cut loose, then,” said Patsy, drawing nearer. “You don’t need to beat around any more bushes. I’ll go up against anything for coin, if there’s enough of it, or for that skirt. You start right in with the bridle off and hand out your dye stuff. You’ll find me game, all right.”
Magill really thought so, now, so well had Patsy played his part. He laid his finger on Patsy’s arm, saying more impressively:
“Listen to me, Dolan. If you mean all you say, I can put you in right to share in a barrel of money. It’s not a case of crack a bank or pull off any kind of a dangerous job. The coin is where it can be easily got—barring one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Forcing a certain party to say where it’s hidden.”
“The coin?”
“Yes.”
“Who hid it?”
“Never mind who hid it, Dolan,” Magill objected. “Don’t you get too inquisitive. The party who hid it had no legitimate claim on it. He stole it. Furthermore, he’s dead. There will never be a kick from him. All we need do in order to get it is to force a certain party to squeal.”
“How much coin is there?” asked Patsy, displaying a steadily increasing interest.
“A quarter million.”
“Come again! Say that just once more.”
“A quarter million.”
“I reckoned I must have misunderstood. Say, you ain’t nutty, are you?” questioned Patsy, with a suspicious growl. “Your dome ain’t cracked, is it?”
“Not a crack in it,” Magill earnestly assured him. “I’m handing you straight goods. There’s a quarter million that may be had for—well, Dolan, for a mere bit of chesty work. You wouldn’t get in on it, mind you, only I cannot get word to pals of mine in time to use them. I want a little help.”
“For what?”
“To take that skirt where she can be properly questioned,” Magill said pointedly.
“Take her where?”
“To a house about three miles from here.”
“What’s the matter with a hack or a buzz wagon?”
“Either would fill the bill,” said Magill. “There is only one difficulty.”
“What’s that?”
“The skirt says she won’t go,” Magill explained suggestively.
“Oh, ho; I see!” said Patsy, with eyes dilating. “You want to force her to go?”
“That calls the turn,” answered Magill. “She has agreed to meet me at the end of this street just before dark to finish the spiel I was having with her. She wouldn’t end it here for fear she’d be seen from the house where she boards.”
“I get you.”
“There are only a few scattered houses at the end of the street, and that’s the direction I, want to take her,” Magill added. “Now, if you’re not a bird head, you can see how easy it can be, done.”
“You mean to kidnap her?” said Patsy quickly.
“That’s the game.”
“And you want me to help?”
“If you’ve got the nerve.”
“I’ve got nerve enough, all right,” declared Patsy. “But what do I get for this job?”
“Enough money to buy a corner lot on Broadway,” Magill forcibly assured him. “That’s all I want of you, too, and it’s all the risk you have to take.”
“When do I get the coin, and how much?”
“Ten thousand bucks, possibly more, within twenty-four hours.”
“After nailing the skirt?”
“Exactly.”
“I’m hooked,” said Patsy, as if abruptly deciding to accept the offer. “Spiel off what you want done and I’ll do it.”
“Shake!” said Magill, extending his hand. “I thought I read your mug correctly. My name is Mike Magill, sometimes called Turk Magill, and you’ll find me all right and always on the level.”
“If that goes, Mr. Magill, I’m your meat for any kind of a job,” said Patsy. “A quarter million, eh? Say, I’m afraid I’ll wake up. Hang it, I’d wade through blood for that. What am I to do?”
“We’ll need a touring car,” said Magill.
“I know a garage where I can swipe one.”
“Swiping it might make trouble for us. Could you hire it?”
“Sure—if I had the price,” said Patsy.
“Here’s a twenty-dollar note. Will that be enough?”
“More than enough.”
“Take it, then,” said Magill. “It shows you, too, that I mean business.”
“I’m wise to that, all right.”
“Do your part, Dolan, and you’ll get a hundred bucks for every dime in that twenty,” Magill added impressively.
“You leave it to me,” Patsy rejoined. “That skirt is as good as on her way.”