The Mystery of the Crossed Needles by Nick Carter - HTML preview

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CHAPTER VI.
 PATSY’S STILL-HUNT.

“I believe I’ve found him,” was the assertion with which Patsy Garvan greeted Nick Carter, as he opened the door of his own library. “I’ve heard of a chink with a sore mudhook and a listener branded from the top edge down to the flap where you’d hang an earring, if you wore such a thing.”

Patsy jumped from behind Nick’s desk as the detective and Chick entered the room, and it was obvious that the enthusiastic second assistant had been about to write a report for his chief when he was interrupted.

He had thrown his hat on a chair, taken off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and thrust the fingers of his left hand through his hair, as a preparation for literary labor. Writing was one of the occupations that he seldom took up by choice.

“Where is he, Patsy?” asked Nick, as he took the chair the young fellow had vacated. “Can you produce him?”

“Sure I can,” replied Patsy. “That is, after we’ve laid out three or four other chinks who’ll maybe stick in the way.”

“In Chinatown?” asked Chick.

“Naw!” was Patsy’s scornful reply. “That isn’t any place to look for a chink who’s traveling on the ragged edge of the law. That’s where you’d naturally look for him, and he wouldn’t be a chink if he didn’t have cunning enough to be somewhere else. Gee! They’re a wise bunch, and don’t you forget it. Why, I——”

“Where did you find him?” interrupted Nick. “Get down to business.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” returned Patsy, in a half-apologetic tone. “When I went out of the house to-night, to look for this chink, I didn’t know where to go. It wasn’t likely he’d be down near Mott or Doyers or Pell Street. Those are Chinatown, of course, and there are more chinks to the square yard around there than you’d find in square miles anywhere else in New York.”

“That’s so,” commented Chick.

“Of course, it’s so. Everybody knows that. Also, there was a possibility that this crooked-eyed geezer might be there. But I didn’t think so. The question was, where should I look? I know a lot of chink laundries in Greater New York, and some more over in Jersey City. But it would take me a week to look into them all, and I wouldn’t be sure of landing my man, at that.”

“Great Scott! Why don’t you tell your yarn right off the bat, Patsy?” begged Chick. “Where is this Chinaman?”

“I’m coming to that, Chick. Don’t be in such a hustle. When I’d walked around for a while, thinking it over, I found myself back in front of our house.”

“Yes?”

“I was on the other side of the avenue, in the shadow, when I saw two men come out of this house.”

“You did?” shouted Chick. “Did you know them? Who were they? Why didn’t you say so at first?”

“Of course, I knew them,” replied Patsy, to Chick’s first query. “They were the chief and you.”

Chick snorted in disgust, while Nick Carter laughed, for he had suspected what Patsy would say.

“What did you do then?” asked Nick.

“I followed your taxi in another one that I picked up on Thirty-fourth Street, and I told him to keep yours in sight. It took me to Andrew Anderton’s house.

“When I saw you and Chick go in, I paid off my taxi driver and told him to beat it. Then I took up my post on the other side of the avenue and watched. You see, you’d told me that it was the Yellow Tong that had laid out Mr. Anderton, and I know the ways of chinks.”

“Go on.”

“You hadn’t been in there more than a minute before a chink came strolling past the house, and he met another one at the corner. Then two more came, and two more after that. They did not all stay in a bunch, but I saw them all speak to each other.”

“What about the man with the scar that the chief wants?” put in Chick.

“I’m coming to that. The chinks were all watching the Anderton house in a casual kind of way, but all at once I found two of them were missing. What was funny about that was that they did not walk away. I saw the whole six in front of the house at one moment, and the next, when I went to count them, there were only four.”

“What had become of the other two?”

“I don’t know. But that wasn’t all of it. While I was wondering where they had gone, I’m a chink myself if two more didn’t vanish the same way.”

“But they must have gone somewhere,” interposed Nick Carter impatiently. “They weren’t swallowed up by the sidewalk.”

“That’s what they seemed to be,” insisted Patsy. “However, I wasn’t going to stand anything like that without trying to call the bluff. So I walked down the avenue for a block, under the trees, against the park fence, and then crossed over. I came moseying along past Anderton’s, and there was my two Mr. Chinks.”

“What were they doing?”

“Just coming slowly along, chattering to each other. I don’t know much chink lingo, but I’m on to some of their words, and I heard one of them say he’d had another fight. The other one asked him what about. Then came something I couldn’t make out, but I caught the chink word for smoothing iron.”

“Yes?”

“Just then they came into the light of an arc lamp, and I got a flash at the ear of the one who said he’d been in a fight. I saw the white scar. At once I piped off his right hand, and I saw that he had a finger tied up in a white rag. That was enough. I kept right on past them, as if I wasn’t interested. But I knew they were suspicious.”

“What did they do?”

“They waited till I’d got to the corner, where I turned around. I know that part of the avenue pretty well, and I made for a vacant lot with boards built up around it. There’s one loose board that I’d noticed when I was past there last week, and it had struck me then that it would be handy if a fellow happened to want to hide.”

“That’s right, Patsy!” commended Nick. “A good detective is always careful to take note of everything. The most unimportant things—or things that seem unimportant—may mean a great deal at some other time.”

“Exactly the way I’d figured it,” said Patsy, his freckled face flushing with pleasure at his chief’s words. “And it just hit the spot to-night. I slipped through the hole—just wide enough for me to squeeze through—and pulled the board back into place.”

“It’s a good job you’re slim, Patsy,” smiled Nick.

“Yes. That’s been a help to me many times. Anyhow, as I was going to say, I hadn’t more than got behind the boards, when the chinks came to the corner and peeked around. There’s a big arc light there, you know, so that I could see them quite plainly. They waited a minute, and then they walked past the place where I was, and hustled around into Madison Avenue. I was out of the hole and at the corner just as they boarded a street car.”

“Did you get on the same car?” asked Chick.

Patsy shook his head emphatically.

“Not me, Chick. I was too wise for that. But luck was with me, for another car came along, close behind the other. There had been a blockade downtown, and there was a string of five or six cars in a row.”

“Well?” put in Nick.

“There was nothing to it after that,” replied Patsy, grinning. “The chinks got off at Hundred and Twenty-fifth and walked east. I was a block behind them. They turned the corner when they got to Third Avenue, and then another corner. I landed them at last. They went into a chink laundry that was all dark. One of them knocked at the door. It was opened right away. I guess there was a peephole. But after a while the door swung back and the two went in.”

“And that was all?”

“Not quite. I hung around for a while, and, sure enough, four other Chinamen came and got in. I couldn’t see whether they were the same four I’d been watching on Fifth Avenue, and who got away from me, but it’s a gold watch to a rusty nail that they were.”

“You know just where this laundry is, of course?” asked Nick.

“Gee! Yes. I can lead you right to it. But there’s a little more I haven’t told you yet. I thought, if I hung around for a while, I might find out something else. So I crossed the street, a little way below the laundry. Then I came back and got into a doorway right opposite. I hadn’t been there more than two minutes, when a taxicab came up and a tall man got out. I got only a glimpse of him. He had a long black coat and soft hat, and he wore spectacles with big black rims.”

Nick Carter betrayed the first excitement that had marked him since Patsy began to tell his story.

“Was he a Chinaman or a Japanese, Patsy?” he asked eagerly.

“Search me. I couldn’t see in the dark.”

“Where did he go?”

“Into the laundry. The door opened as soon as the taxi stopped. There wasn’t any waiting for him. It was all done up in a flash. He’d gone in and the taxi was on its way in less time than you could take off your hat. I did not stay any longer. I thought I’d seen enough. I jumped an elevated train and came home. The name on the sign over the laundry was ‘Sun Jin.’”

“That will do,” said Nick Carter shortly. “We’ll all go to bed. In the morning we’ll go after the man with the scar on his ear and the rag on his finger.”