CHAPTER IX.
THROUGH DEVIOUS WAYS.
“See why Chick hasn’t come down, Patsy,” directed Nick Carter, as he and Patsy Garvan faced each other at breakfast the next morning. “He must have been very tired last night to sleep like this now.”
Patsy left the room, but soon returned, with a queer look of dismay on his face.
“He isn’t there,” was his report. “His bed hasn’t been slept in, either.”
“Are you sure of that?” asked Nick sharply.
“Positive. I met Mrs. Peters on the stairs, and she told me none of the bedrooms have been touched by the maids yet. They never are at this time in the morning. Why, chief, it’s only eight o’clock.”
But Patsy was speaking to emptiness by this time. Nick Carter had run up the stairs two at a time, and examined Chick’s bedchamber for himself. He came down in another minute or two, a heavy frown on his brow.
“Let’s have breakfast, Patsy.”
“What about Chick?”
“Let’s have breakfast,” was all Nick Carter replied.
“Gee!” muttered Patsy. “I don’t know whether I can eat anything. This thing has put a kink in my appetite that——”
Just then Mrs. Peters, the housekeeper, entered with a dish of ham and eggs, which she placed before Nick Carter. As she lifted the silver dish cover, she asked quietly:
“Didn’t you know Mr. Chick was out, Mr. Carter?”
“No. Do you know what time he went out?”
“I heard the front door close about two o’clock, I think it was,” she answered. “I wondered who it was. But there is nothing unusual in you or somebody to go out at any hour of the night.”
“Sure as you live,” interjected Patsy.
“But I knew you intended all to stay home last night, and that was why I couldn’t make it out. So I thought I’d serve the ham and eggs myself, and ask you.”
Mrs. Peters, the worthy housekeeper, had been with Nick Carter for many years, and took a motherly interest in him which excused her curiosity. The detective smiled kindly, as he replied:
“I’m glad you’ve told me this much, Mrs. Peters. I confess I don’t know what has become of Chick. But I soon will. He has good reason for being away, no doubt.”
He nodded a dismissal, and Mrs. Peters disappeared. Patsy did not ask any more questions for the present. He busied himself with breakfast. At the end of the meal Nick Carter asked him if he could take him direct to the Sun Jin laundry.
“I can do that, chief,” replied Patsy. “But we’ll find the chinks there pretty suspicious. How are we going to get in?”
“We’ll see when we get there,” replied Nick Carter quietly.
“I don’t say you can’t get into the laundry,” went on Patsy. “We’ll find one or two chinks in there, ironing and washing, as they always are. But you know that what you see in the shop of a chink laundry doesn’t tell you what is going on behind or upstairs.”
Nick Carter only nodded and smiled. He did not depend on Patsy, or anybody else, to make him understand the ways of Chinamen in New York.
“Call up Danny Maloney, and tell him to bring the small car—the new one. I don’t think there are many persons in New York know I have that one. I have never had it out yet.”
In ten minutes’ time, Nick Carter and Patsy were sliding smoothly uptown in the new car which the detective had bought for daylight use—mainly because his other motor cars—and particularly the big sixty-horsepower machine—were too familiar to the gaze of certain New Yorkers who feared him.
Leaving the car at a little distance, Nick and Patsy walked along the side street on which Sun Jin’s laundry was situated, and stepped inside. The detective produced a shirt and collar which he said he wanted laundered, and accepted the check from the moon-faced man at the ironing board without any comment.
During the transaction, another Chinaman continued to iron at a board at the back of the hot little room without turning his face toward the customers. He seemed to be completely absorbed in his work, and to feel no interest in anything else. Certainly, he showed no curiosity.
This did not deceive Nick Carter, however. He knew that the very calmness of these Chinamen was suspicious. There might be a dozen more of them in the place behind, or upstairs, and each one might be staring down through peepholes at the strangers.
Only one thing Nick was sure of, and that was that the man with the scarred ear was not in the front shop. Neither of the men working had any such mark, and their hands were clear of bandages or injuries.
Without comment or inquiry, Nick accepted his check. The Chinaman said laconically, “Thursday!” and went on with his ironing without looking at his visitors as they left the shop and closed the door behind them. Patsy glanced through the window as they passed. The two Chinamen were still ironing with characteristic patient industry.
Turning a corner, Nick met a policeman, and the quick look of recognition from the officer made him ask a quiet question, without stopping, as they passed:
“Is there another entrance into Sun Jin’s laundry besides the front one?”
“Through the saloon on the corner,” replied the officer briefly, as he walked on.
“That cop knows his biz,” remarked Patsy, in a low tone. “Anybody seeing him would think he’d never seen you before.”
“He’s an old friend of mine,” returned Nick coolly. “I have a great many on the force.”
Neither Nick Carter nor Patsy wore any disguise, but both were dressed in such inconspicuous raiment that they looked like thousands of other New Yorkers. At a glance, one would have said they were ordinary business men—insurance agents, perhaps.
So, when they slipped into the saloon the policeman had specified and strolled into the room at the back of the bar, the waiter served them with the beer Nick ordered, and went back to the free-lunch counter in front without giving them any further attention.
“Now, Patsy! Hurry! Get across the yard at the back, and slip up the wooden stairs you see through the window. If the door is fastened, open it. You know how to do that.”
“Sure!”
Patsy Garvan found the door locked, as Nick had anticipated. But, with a piece of strong steel wire, that was part of the equipment of his pocketknife, he operated the lock as easily as if he had a key.
Nick Carter sat at the table, with his glass of beer before him, having only sipped it, and through the window watched the door at the top of the crazy wooden staircase outside. He seemed perfectly cool, but his brain was working rapidly and his nerves were on a strain. He was listening for any sound that might suggest trouble for Patsy.
At the first note of alarm he would be on the stairs himself. But, no such note came. At the end of five minutes Patsy appeared again on the staircase, and immediately afterward he was once more sitting at the table, facing his chief.
“Well, Patsy?”
“Gee! There’s nothing in that joint but two empty rooms. They’re right over the laundry, and I found a crooked staircase leading down to a door on the ground floor.”
“Yes?”
“I sneaked down, and there was a little hole that had been cut in the door with something. I peeked through, and, gee! there were the two chinks, still ironing.”
“What was over the two empty rooms?”
“Nothing but the roof. You noticed that the whole shanty is one of those crazy frame buildings that chink laundries so often get into. Well, I saw there was a trap-door to the roof, but there was no ladder or anything to get up to it, so I didn’t try to see what was on the roof. It wasn’t likely there was anything.”
“The rooms were quite empty?”
“Yes, except for dust,” replied Patsy. “The dust was some help,” he continued, with a grin. “For I saw the marks of a lot of feet, and they were all flat, like the prints of chink felt shoes—except that there was one mark, which I found at different parts of the room, partly hidden by the chink shoes, and which showed that a fellow with American shoes had been there. They were large.”
“I see,” nodded Nick, rather eagerly. “The person who owned them was a big man?”
“I should think so, from the shoe prints.”
“Wasn’t there any furniture in the room, nor any scraps of rubbish that might give us a clew?”
Nick Carter put this question rather sharply. He couldn’t believe that his quick-witted assistant had come away without finding something that might be useful.
“There was this,” replied Patsy, handing a scrap of paper to his chief. “I don’t know that it means anything. It was on the crooked staircase. Being white, it caught my eye, and I picked it up. I was going to throw it down again, and I would have done so if I hadn’t remembered that you always say it is better to keep and examine everything when you are on a case, no matter if it doesn’t seem of any account.”
Long before Patsy had finished his disquisition, Nick Carter had taken from him the scrap of white letter paper his assistant had held out, and he was now gazing at it with a thoughtful eye.
The scrap of paper had been torn from an envelope—that was shown by the fact that part of the gummed flap still adhered—and on the fragment was a name, or part of one. It was “Bentha.”
“Bentha?” murmured Nick. “It is easy to see that part of the name has been torn off. Of course, the name is ‘Bentham.’ Now, what brought this bit of paper to those stairs?”
He lighted a cigar and smoked for several moments in deep reflection. Then he drew from his pocket the powerful magnifying glass he generally carried, and gazed steadily at the bit of white envelope. Patsy noted that his attention was not concentrated on the name, but that he looked at the back of the envelope as closely as at the front.
“Do you want that beer, Patsy?” he asked, at last, as he replaced the glass in his pocket, and carefully deposited the scrap of envelope between the leaves of his notebook. “If you don’t, empty it into a cuspidor.”
Patsy did not want the beer, and he disposed of it as he was told. The detective emptied his own glass into another cuspidor. Then he got up and sauntered out to the street. Patsy was close behind him.
When they got to the waiting motor car, Nick directed Danny Maloney to drive to a cross street near Andrew Anderton’s house.
The detective did not speak during the ride. But when they got to their destination, he told Maloney to wait, and walked swiftly around to Fifth Avenue, and up the steps of the Anderton mansion.
As Nick and Patsy went in, they found themselves among half a dozen other men who were also going in.
“The coroner’s inquest,” whispered Carter to his assistant. “This is lucky. It prevents our being particularly noticed.”