CHAPTER VIII.
THE THIRD STRING.
Chick Carter was not idle while Nick Carter and Patsy Garvan were engaged as described. Chick had, of course, a very good description of the man whose identity he had undertaken to discover, and it soon proved sufficient for his need. For the man had been a frequent visitor to the apartments of Kate Crandall, and he was quite well known by Tom Carson, the clerk, with whom Chick had a confidential interview soon after entering the house.
“Know him—sure!” Carson declared, after Chick had introduced himself and stated his mission. “That description fits just one man to a nicety. His name is Jim Dacey.”
“Capital!” said Chick earnestly. “Jim Dacey, eh? What do you know about him, Mr. Carson?”
“Well, nothing very bad, Mr. Carter, nor so good that he’ll be sought for a Sunday-school superintendent,” laughed the clerk. “He’s a man about town and a good deal of a rounder.”
“Is he in business?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“Anything that comes his way, I guess, or anybody. He must have means enough to sport on in a quiet way, and I think he gambles frequently when he finds an easy game. I can’t put you wise to much more.”
“Is he quite friendly with the Crandall woman?” Chick inquired.
“He certainly is,” said Carson.
“How long has she been living here?”
“About two months.”
“What’s her reputation?”
“None too good. She’s pretty fly, I reckon, if the whole truth were told. We have been thinking of asking her to move out. That tells the story.”
“Quite right,” Chick replied. “Do you know where Jim Dacey lives?”
“Not exactly,” said Carson. “But you can easily find out.”
“How so?”
“Go out and question Tony Hogan. He has a taxicab stand around the corner. He has frequently taken Dacey home from here. He can tell you more about the man and just where he lives.”
“Thanks,” said Chick approvingly. “Not a word about this to others, mind you.”
“Trust me, Carter. I’m dumb.”
“You haven’t seen Dacey this evening?”
“No, not since yesterday.”
There was a very good reason for it. Leaving his limousine in the side street in charge of his chauffeur, Martin Moran, who was a bird of the same shady feather, Jim Dacey had entered the side door of the house when he went up to Kate Crandall’s apartments.
Chick thanked Carson again and repaired to the street. He soon found the man he was seeking, a shrewd, keen-eyed Irishman, who already knew Chick by sight and reputation. Hogan needed only a hint from the detective, moreover, to cut loose and tell all that he knew about Dacey.
But Chick soon found that Hogan could add but little definite information to that already obtained, which of itself was quite sufficient to convince Chick that he was on the right track. This was further confirmed by the fact that Dacey dwelt in a somewhat isolated place, that was less than a mile from the Darling residence, where he employed only a deaf housekeeper and the chauffeur already mentioned.
Chick paused only briefly to determine what course he would take.
“Nick and Patsy can look after things here,” he said to himself. “They will not need me. There is a bare possibility, on the other hand, that Darling is in the clutches of this bunch of blacklegs, as Nick suspects, and that he is confined at the Dacey place. I’ll go out there and look it over, at all events, and communicate later with Nick.”
Then, turning to the cabman, he said abruptly:
“Take me out there, Hogan, and drop me a couple of hundred yards from the place. I’ll decide later whether I have further use for you.”
“That’s good enough for me, Mr. Carter,” Hogan said readily. “Tumble in, sir.”
Less than half an hour brought them to their destination, a crossroad from which could be seen, in the near distance, quite an old wooden dwelling half hidden amid the trees flanking one side of the narrower road. It could be discerned only dimly in the starlight, though some lighted lower windows could be plainly seen through the trees. It was the only dwelling in the immediate locality, and Chick came to a quick conclusion.
“Drive on about a quarter mile, Hogan, and wait till I come,” he directed. “I cannot say just how long you may have to wait.”
“My time is yours, Mr. Carter,” said Hogan. “You’ll find me there when you come.”
“Good enough,” said Chick. “You’ll get all that’s coming to you.”
“I know I can bank on that, sir.”
Chick waited until the taxicab had disappeared around a curve in the main road. He then followed the other for a short distance, presently vaulting a low wall and crossing a strip of rough land, from which he could steal into the grounds at one side of the Dacey dwelling.
They were unattractive in appearance, denoting that the owner was far from being a man of means. Chick sized them up correctly, and was about to steal nearer the house to peer through one of the windows, when the side door was opened and a woman appeared in the lighted hall. She lingered briefly, gazing out toward the road, and then closed the door and vanished.
“The deaf housekeeper,” thought Chick, who had easily seen her tall, gaunt figure. “She is evidently expecting some one, probably Dacey himself. There would be lights in more than that one room if he were at home. By Jove, if she is as deaf as Hogan stated, and also is alone there, I can easily enter unheard through one of the windows and search the house from cellar to roof. I could find Darling, all right, if he is confined there.”
Not yet convinced that Dacey was absent, however, Chick still proceeded cautiously, approaching one of the lighted windows on all fours, then stealthily rising to peer between the curtain and the casing.
He could see part of a cheaply furnished sitting room. An oil lamp burned on the table. The housekeeper was seated near by, absorbed in reading a newspaper. It was half past nine by a small oak clock on the mantel.
Chick watched the woman for a few moments, then gently tapped once on the windowpane. The woman did not stir. Chick tapped louder, then knocked quite sharply, but the sounds brought no sign from the reading woman.
“As deaf as a hitching post,” thought Chick. “I’ll force a window in the opposite side of the house. She might detect the chill of the night air, if I were to open a door.”
Stealing around the house, Chick selected the side window of a front room, then shrouded in darkness. Thrusting his knife blade between the sashes, he easily forced the lock aside and was about to lift the lower section, when a flash of light deterred him.
He saw it again in a moment. It flashed between the trees in the distance. It came from the lamps of an automobile running at high speed over the main road. Suddenly it diverged and a steady glare fell upon the road approaching Dacey’s place.
“By Jove, it may be coming here,” Chick muttered, watching. “Dacey is returning, perhaps, just in time to prevent my search. Yes, by thunder, I am right—it is coming here.”
The car was slowing down. The outlines of a limousine now could be seen. It swerved into a driveway approaching the house—and Chick dropped flat on the ground, close to the foundation wall, lest he might be seen in the glare of the headlights.
He now saw that there were several men in the car, but he could not distinguish their faces. The number surprised him.
“Great Scott! there are six, at least,” he said to himself. “I’m up against more of a gang than I expected. Where the deuce are they going?”
The car had passed a side door and was rounding a rear corner of the house. Chick crept out from his concealment far enough to see that it had stopped directly back of the dwelling. Presently, too, he saw four of the men alighting—for he naturally supposed that all of them were men.
One of them hastened to open a bulkhead door leading into the cellar. The chauffeur extinguished the lights of the car. Then a cry came from Dacey, as he returned from the cellar with a lighted lantern.
“All ready for them, Martin,” he said curtly. “Lend a hand, Sheldon. You stand aside, Floyd, and hold this lantern; we can lift them out and lug them into the cellar. We’ll lock them in the laundry till we have settled this business. I’ll send Sarah to bed, though she’s as deaf as an adder.”
“Would she squeal, Jim, if she knew?” questioned Kate Crandall.
“Never a squeal,” Dacey declared. “But she’s best out of the way, for all that.”
“By Jove, that was a woman’s voice, as sure as I’m over seven,” thought Chick, when he heard Kate’s question. “A woman in male attire, eh? Great guns! I begin to scent the rat in the meal. This bunch of rascals have in some way got the best of Nick and Patsy. But there still is a third string to the chief’s bow. It’s always safe to bank on one of us.”
Chick had not long to wait for his suspicion to be confirmed. He saw Nick and Patsy lifted from the limousine and carried into the cellar, both conscious then, but gagged and securely bound, and Chick stole quickly back to the window he had unlocked.
“I’ll get into the house while the coast is clear,” he said to himself. “I’ll find out what business is to be settled by these rascals. Then I’ll settle them and their business—or know the reason why!”
Noiselessly lifting the window, Chick crept over the sill and stood in a gloomy front parlor, reclosing the window and locking it. There he paused for a moment, listening. He could hear the men inside, the muffled sound of their voices, and the bang of a closed door.
“The bulkhead door, or that of the laundry,” he muttered. “Got Nick and Patsy, eh? I must contrive to liberate them. I’ll try to locate the cellar stairs.”
Chick did not find it difficult to do so. He tiptoed to the door leading into the hall, which ran straight through the house to a rear door and the kitchen. It was lighted only by a feeble oil lamp and the glow that came through the open door of the sitting room.
Pausing, Chick peered cautiously in that direction—then quickly drew back.
A door near the main stairway was suddenly opened.
Jim Dacey had come up from the cellar and was striding through the dimly lighted hall.