A PUZZLE FOR THE SKIPPER.
It was not without thoroughly understanding the situation that John Garrison Rayne told himself he would be in danger if he did not get away before Nick Carter could communicate with the shore.
Even if it should be impossible to telegraph, that motor boat was a swift-moving craft, and it would take very little time for it to get to the wharf from the Cherokee, if the famous detective should determine to go, instead of trying to signal.
It happened that Rayne was just stepping on the quay as the motor boat swirled alongside of the steamer.
Nick Carter, no longer dressed as a sailor, but in a neat, light, business suit, stepped upon the platform at the foot of the sea ladder, while his two assistants—who also had changed their attire—followed him closely.
Nick had removed the heavy beard he had worn as Joe Sykes, the boatswain, and there was little in his face to remind one of the sailor except his penetrating dark eyes.
Patsy and Chick, too, had changed their faces, so that no one on board the steamer would be likely to suspect that they ever had been members of the crew, taking the hard work, and the equally hard language of the bullying mate, all as part of the day’s work.
Captain Lawton was worried over the taking away of the suit case. He had begun to feel misgivings, and it had disturbed his nerves. So he scowled when he saw three strangers boarding his ship.
“What do you want?” was his inhospitable greeting, as Nick gained the top of the ladder.
“I am a detective, and I’ve come to see your passenger, Paul Clayton,” replied Nick Carter, as he looked the skipper up and down. “He took passage with you under the name of Miles. Where is he?”
“Search me,” grinned the captain.
“He’s on board your vessel, isn’t he?” demanded Nick sternly. “A passenger of yours?”
“No. He ain’t nothing of the kind. You say you’re a detective. Well, you’re a little late. Another detective, from New York, has been here and arrested him. So he isn’t a passenger. He’s a prisoner.”
“Impossible!” ejaculated Nick Carter.
“Nothing impossible about it,” sneered the captain. “He’s down in the cabin he’s had since we left New York. Only now it’s a cell, instead of a stateroom, and I have two of my men watching to see that he doesn’t get away. That’s all there is to it.”
“How do you know this man who arrested Paul Clayton—or Miles—is a detective?”
The captain held out a card, which Nick Carter took and scanned hastily.
“Detective Lieutenant Sawyer!” murmured Nick, reading from the card. “I don’t know of any New York detective by that name.”
“Well, anyhow, he was here, and he’s gone ashore with the stolen property, in a suit case. If you look over there, you can just make him out, landing on the wharf from a yawl.”
“Gee!” whispered Patsy. “I believe that’s right. Eh, Chick?”
“Looks like his walk,” returned Chick.
“I wish we could make out his face. What kind of clothes do you suppose he has on? We’re going to have a fine time running him down,” was Patsy’s low-toned remark—in which there was plenty of confidence, however.
Nick Carter was thinking quickly. He had seen the man getting out of the rowboat at the wharf. But it was too far to make him out for certain, and Nick had very little faith in Captain Lawton’s integrity.
“I’ll go down and see the prisoner, anyhow,” he said sharply.
“I don’t know whether you can,” hesitated Captain Lawton. “I have orders to keep the man safe, but nothing was said to me about allowing any one to see him.”
Nick Carter turned back the lapel of his waistcoat and showed a jeweled badge. It was very seldom that he exhibited this insignia. But there were occasionally times, like the present, when it was desirable that he should prove his identity.
Captain Lawton leaned forward to scan the badge. He saw that it bore the arms of New York State, and that in the center was a medallion portrait of the man who wore it.
But the skipper was naturally suspicious, and he did not accept even this proof immediately—or pretended he did not. As a matter of fact, he had seen Nick Carter before, in his proper person, and he was obliged to admit to himself that this calm, self-possessed man seemed to be the same.
“If that badge is straight, it is all right,” he growled. “Only I do not know that.”
“Here’s my card,” said Nick impatiently, as he took one of his cards from its case. “You may see my name and address there.”
“‘Nicholas Carter, Madison Avenue, New York City,’” read the captain. “It looks as if you might be the man you say you are.”
“You say that this other man, who pretended he was a detective, has taken the jewels stolen from Stephen Reed, and that it was he we just now saw climbing out of a small boat at the wharf?” demanded Nick, who was tired of arguing about his own identity.
“He took the jewelry,” replied, Lawton, more surly than ever. “I have not had proof that he was a fake detective any more than I know you’re a real one.”
“We’ll prove who I am by the chief of police of San Juan,” interrupted Nick sharply. “But there is no time to argue longer about that. I’ll send my men ashore, and I dare say they will round up this man. He seems to have fooled you completely.”
“There ain’t nobody can fool me!” grunted the captain indignantly.
“Chick!” called out Nick, turning his back on the wrathful Lawton. “You and Patsy go and see the chief of police, give him my compliments, and tell him to look out for this man. Most likely the rascal will try to get out of town right away.”
“Who are we to look for?” asked Chick.
“The Apache.”
“Who’s that?” asked the captain.
“Gee! You don’t want to get in his way. That’s all!” grinned Patsy. “He’d steal the ship from under you while you was giving orders to stop him.”
Patsy said this with so much earnestness, even though he grinned, that Captain Lawton was visibly impressed, while Nick Carter frowned at his irrepressible assistant.
“You don’t want me to tell the chief of police why we want the Apache, do you?” whispered Chick in Nick Carter’s ear.
“No. Let him think it is a smuggling case. Anyhow, he won’t ask too many questions if you tell him it is my case. He knows me.”
“What’s his name? Douglas, isn’t it?”
“Yes. He knows you as well as me.”
By this time Captain Lawton had come to the conclusion that it was the real Nick Carter who stood before him, and he desired to give so eminent a crime detector all the aid he could. But it never entered his head that this well-groomed man could be the sloppy-looking Joe Sykes, who had sailed in the Cherokee as a boatswain.
“This man who took the jewelry was about the same height as yourself, Mr. Carter,” he volunteered. “He wore a blue suit of clothes, that didn’t fit any too well, and his cap had a gold band around it, as if he might be an officer of some kind.”
“Thank you,” responded Nick. “I dare say we shall get him before we are much older. But we’ll talk more about that after I’ve got my men here away.”
“All right, Mr. Carter! Anything you say.”
“Look here, Chick!”
“Well, chief?”
“When you have finished your work—seen the chief of police, and made any inquiries you can, come to the Ionic Hotel. I’ll go there when I get through on the ship. Now hustle, boys!”
“All right!” grinned Patsy. “We’ll round up this citizen we’re after before he knows whether he’s afloat or ashore. Eh, Chick?”
“We’ll do our best,” was Chick’s earnest response.
The two assistants went down the ladder, and Nick Carter leaned over the side of the steamer, watching them make good time to the shore.
Even when the motor boat had almost covered the expanse of water between the Cherokee and the wharf, the detective remained in the same position. He was reflecting. He had the faculty of being able to do that anywhere, even with all kinds of confusion around him.
The new complication of the theft of the Stephen Reed jewelry just when it seemed as if the troubles of Paul Clayton might be over, was bad enough. But the added fact that the Apache was posing as a detective, and might even get the police to help him, unwittingly, to get away, made it worse.
Nick had gone ashore originally to look for Rayne, but had not been able to hear anything about a man answering the description of the cunning rascal. Then he had decided that he could do more effective work in behalf of Paul Clayton by dropping his disguise of Joe Sykes and cutting off all connection with the Cherokee as a member of its crew.
There would be nothing gained by continuing on board as a boatswain, with Captain Lawton and Van Cross giving him orders. Neither was it desirable that Chick and Patsy should be sailors, either.
Having come to this decision, it had not been difficult for all three to get rid of their make-ups, and so well did they accomplish this that Captain Lawton had not the slightest suspicion they ever had been on his ship before.
“Do you want to see the prisoner, Mr. Carter?” asked the captain, in a tone of respect that was rather amusing, considering how surly and insolent he had been at first.
“Yes. Take me to him, please,” answered Nick. “And I should be glad if you will have a boat ready to put me ashore when I have looked over things below.”
“Sure you shall have a boat,” assented the captain promptly.