CHAPTER VII.
PATSY GETS INTO THE GAME.
“What did you find out from the Jap, Chick?” were the detective’s first words, as soon as they were well away from the front of Bentham’s home.
“Nothing. What I told Mr. Bentham just now was the absolute truth. But I learned something from the cook, Maggie. Swagara had to go out to get some vegetables for her, and while he was away, Maggie loosened up.”
“Go on! Hurry up!” urged Nick. “What did she say?”
“Only that Swagara used to be employed by Ched Ramar, the Indian millionaire. That is how Maggie describes him. She knew it through another cook—a cousin or sister of hers, I believe—who lives in the next house to Ched Ramar. She’s seen Swagara go into the house, at night, and I guess he’s been holding two jobs—one here and the other at Ched Ramar’s.”
“Is he employed there still?”
“I couldn’t find that out. Maggie seems to be afraid to say much about Ched. All she has been told is that he is a millionaire, and she has that only on the strength of the jewelry he wears when he goes out, and the fact that swell people visit him. He has not lived at that house very long. When he moved in, about six weeks ago, all the things he brought with him were truckloads of big packing cases. Some of these were as big as a house, according to Maggie’s cousin—or sister. When all those were in, furniture came from some big store. It was all new, and Maggie’s relative thinks it is only rented.”
Nick Carter had been listening so closely to Chick’s recital that they were at the subway station they intended to go to before they knew it. He told Chick to save the rest till they were in a train. When the train started with them, Chick resumed:
“Maggie says Swagara is a quiet young man, who doesn’t talk much. But she has never cared for him since she found he was sneaking away to work somewhere else at night, when he ought to be resting, so as to be ready for what he had to do at Mr. Bentham’s house the next day.”
“What time does he leave Bentham’s usually?” asked Nick.
“About half past eight. He gets there at nine in the morning, ready to begin work after breakfast.”
“Where does he live?”
“He has a room in a street off Fulton, down near Borough Hall, Maggie says. That’s all she knows about it. Of course, I had to get all this out of her by degrees, and under the seal of confidence. I tried to make a good impression on Maggie,” continued Chick, with a grin, “and I flatter myself she thinks I’m all right. I told her I was your clerk, and that I sometimes acted as a chauffeur.”
“Good!” commended Nick. “Half past eight, you say, Swagara leaves Mr. Bentham’s house at night?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to bring Swagara to our house when he leaves Bentham’s to-night, Chick. Have him in my library by nine, if you can.”
Chick did not express any astonishment at this order. Neither did he seem to have any doubt that he could fill it. He had been told to do strange and difficult things so many times that there was nothing could surprise him now.
“All right, chief,” was all he said. “I’ll work it through Maggie.”
Nick Carter did not reply. He did not care how his instructions were carried out, so long as he was obeyed.
When, after luncheon—which he took at his home, with Chick and Patsy Garvan, his other confidential assistant, for table companions—Chick said he was going out and would not be back till nine at night, most likely, the detective only nodded. He knew that Chick was going after Swagara.
For some little time after the departure of Chick, the famous detective busied himself in looking over his mail, which he had not had time to attend to before, and Patsy Garvan helped him.
“Say, chief,” broke out Patsy, after working industriously for an hour sorting letters and putting them in their respective piles under Nick Carter’s eye, “can’t you let me in on this Yellow Tong case again? I was in it before, you know. Didn’t I make good then?”
“You certainly did, Patsy. I have no fault to find.”
“That’s what I thought. But, gee! You and Chick are having a lot of things doing with this Mr. Bentham, and I’m out of it. Of course, I ain’t kicking, because you know what you want. But—gee!—I’d like to get into it. Ain’t there anything I can do?”
Nick Carter smiled as he tossed another letter across the table to the pleading Patsy.
“Put that letter in the ‘No-answer-required’ pile, and don’t get excited,” he said. “I’m going to get you into this case to-night.”
“You are?” almost screamed Patsy. “Suffering crumpets! That’s healthy news. Where do I come in? Have I got to lick somebody? Or is it to be the smooth and ‘Thanks-very-kindly’ stunt? Gee! When it comes to the fresh-laundried diplomatic game, with the honeyed words and eagle eye, you can count me in as standing on the pedestal, with both feet pressed down into the granite. Say, ‘Tact’ is my maiden name!”
“I’m glad to hear it,” smiled Nick Carter. “Because that is the quality I expect you to use. Still, there might be a fight, too. I hope you are not opposed to a scrap, if one should turn up.”
This was too much for Patsy. He could not reply. The bare idea that he, Patsy Garvan, who had licked all the boys of his weight and twenty pounds over, in his part of the Bowery, before he was sixteen, would want to sidestep a battle, completely choked him.
“All right, Patsy,” laughed Nick. “Don’t say anything.”
“Don’t say anything?” repeated Patsy, when at last he could get his breath. “No, I won’t say anything. I want to see the man that gets in front of me to-night and looks crooked. Gee! I’ll mash his face through his back hair. That’s what I’ll do!”
It was not till nine that night that Patsy knew what he was to do, however. That was when Chick led Swagara, the Japanese servant of Matthew Bentham, into Nick Carter’s library, and gave him a chair in front of the detective’s table.
Swagara was a polite young man, of about Patsy Garvan’s size and build, who seemed to be rather anxious to get away as soon as possible.
“I have an engagement to-night,” he announced, in the precise English of one who has not always known the language. “But Mr. Chickering told me that I should hear of something very much to my advantage if I came here, and, of course, I came. I am ambitious, Mr. Carter, and I never neglect anything that seems likely to help me along.”
Swagara made this admission quite freely. He seemed to be frankness itself. He smiled widely, and then waited for Nick Carter to say something else, blinking amiably through rather large spectacles.
“Your engagement is with Professor Ched Ramar,” remarked Nick Carter casually. “How long have you been employed by him, Mr. Swagara?”
“Six weeks,” blurted out Swagara, evidently before he realized what he was saying. “That is—I have been told not to say anything about it,” he added lamely.
“I know that. Ched Ramar doesn’t like his affairs talked about. But you are quite safe here. I know Ched Ramar, and he has no secrets from me—I mean, of an ordinary nature. You have been with him ever since he took that house in which he lives at present—on Brooklyn Heights. You never met him until you were recommended to him by somebody whom you do not know. Ched Ramar has never told you how he came to know of you.”
This was all shooting in the dark for Nick Carter. But he knew the ways of Ched Ramar. He had not been idle all day, and he had found out from a friend of his at police headquarters considerably about Ched Ramar’s methods. It is a way the police have—that of making a few secret inquiries about mysterious foreigners in New York who have plenty of money and no particular apparent business.
“It was something like that,” confessed Swagara. “But not quite. Ched Ramar saw me in a restaurant on the East Side of New York, where I sometimes play chess. He is a chess player, and he got into conversation with me one night. It ended in my saying I wanted employment, and soon—I don’t know how it was—I found myself engaged by him. I keep his rooms in order, and I do anything he tells me.”
“Exactly. You do what he tells you, whether you want to do so or not.”
As Nick Carter spoke, he moved his hands quickly before Swagara’s face, at the same moment that he turned on it a fierce light from a crystal disk set at a certain angle to the electric light over his desk.
Swagara stiffened in his chair. Then he heaved a deep sigh and fell fast asleep.
“A very easy subject,” observed Nick. “No wonder Ched Ramar uses him in his house. He finds it convenient to have a man he can handle as he does Swagara. Patsy!”
“I’m here!” responded Patsy promptly.
“Take a good look at this young man. Can you make up to pass for him, do you think?”
“Can I?” snorted Patsy confidently. “Watch me. Where shall I do it? Right here?”
“Yes. I’ll give you the paints and things. You can take his suit of clothes when your face and hands are made up. Be careful to get the exact shading of his features. You will have to use plain-glass spectacles. You couldn’t see through his. But I can give you a pair that will look exactly like them.”
“Say!” exclaimed Patsy, with a chuckle, as Nick Carter brought a box of grease paints, with boxes of powder, puffs, and bits of soft chamois leather and put them on the table in front of him. “This is the easiest thing I have had for six months. Can I look like this Jap? Well, when I get through, he’ll think he’s Patsy Garvan, and he’ll be asking me when I got in from Tokyo.”
“I don’t intend to let him ask you anything,” corrected Nick Carter. “But I hope you will make yourself look like him. Unless you do, you won’t be able to do anything in this case.”
Patsy went on with his making up. He whispered to himself that he’d “be a native Jap or bu’st,” and both Nick Carter and Chick knew it would be all right.