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Battle for the Right

<h2 id="X">CHAPTER X. INVESTIGATION.</h2> Hastening up a flight of steps that were a replica of the steps in the cellar of the empty house, Chick found that the door at the top was securely fastened. “Just what I expected,” he muttered. “But I guess I can get it open. There’s only a wooden button on the[61] other side. I might break the door right through, but it would make too much noise. My knife will fix it.” One of the blades of his jackknife was long and thin. He thrust this between the door and the jamb, and pushed the button out of the way. “Ridiculously easy!” he said to himself. Then, to Patsy: “We have to get at the outer doors, you know—the one into the kitchen regions, as well as the other on the main floor. The worst of it is that they are on the other side of the house. We’ll have to make our way there. Or, rather, I shall.” “What about me?” asked Patsy. “Stay where you are, in the dark. It will be better to have you ready in case I need help, than to let you get into the muss with me. Don’t you see that?” “I s’pose you’re right,” grumbled Patsy. “But I don’t like this waitin’ game. Maybe I won’t get into it at all. Things are always breakin’ wrong for me. Just when I’m all primed up for a rough-house, I’m put on guard duty, like a boy at a henroost. Holy Perkins! It’s tough!” Chick did not stop to argue with his companion. It was clear that if Nick Carter and three or four policemen were to get into the house, they could not take the time to dribble through the opening in the cellar wall by which Chick and Patsy had made their way from one cellar to the other. When they came up the steps from the cellar, they were on the basement floor, level with the bottom of the courtyard in front of the house, and below what was known as the parlor floor, with its main hall leading to the principal door to the street, at the top of the stone steps outside. Passing along the stone-floored hallway, after making sure that Patsy was out of sight at the door by which they had come up from the cellar, Chick found[62] a door closed, but under which could be seen a line of dusky red light. He realized that he was coming near to the heart of the mystery he and Nick had set out to solve. Feeling for the latch, he discovered, with a thrill of satisfaction, that it was not fastened. He lifted it without difficulty and also absolutely without sound. Then he took a peep through the crack he had made when he pushed the door a little way open. At first, he hesitated to open the door even wide enough to permit him to peep in. He remembered the five men he had seen in the other room on the floor above, and it would not have surprised him to find as many working down here in the cellar. But the room was empty, although evidence that somebody was close at hand was not wanting. It was a large apartment, that looked in a general way like a kitchen. Only, there was no kitchen range, nor pots, pans, or dishes—at least, no utensils such as are generally employed in an ordinary dwelling house in the culinary quarters. A large pine table was the only piece of furniture. There was not even a chair to be seen. On the table was an electric battery, an iron ladle, a few tools, and some slabs of white plaster of oblong form. Over the table glimmered a gas jet turned too low to yield any light. The red glow that Chick had seen under the door came from a large, square stove of peculiar make, which stood out a little way from the wall opposite the door by which he had entered. “That stove was never made for honest use,” thought Chick. “You could not even cook an egg on that thing. And I’m betting with myself that I know just what that stove is doing in this place. It’s cooking new money, or I’m a long way off in my guess.” There were two other doors in the room. One of them, he judged, led into the house, while the other[63] probably connected with the stone hallway ending at the outer door to the front yard. “I hear boiling metal hissing on that stove,” he muttered. “The work is going on, all right. Why, yes! I see the crucible sunk into the stove. I knew that stove was built for only one kind of use.” He went over to the door he believed led to the other part of the house, and found it locked, but the key in the door. “That’s lucky! I didn’t want to have to stop to break it open. Besides, it would have made a big noise, and I don’t know how many men may be close by.” Once outside the door, which he closed softly as soon as he was through, he switched on his electric light. What he found was what he had expected. In one direction were the stairs leading upward to the “parlor floor,” and in the other was the outer door to the front yard. Farther along the wall he saw the door into the room he had just left, so that it was possible to get to the yard by both exits. “Now for the yard door,” he said to himself inaudibly. “It’s locked, no doubt.” He was right about this. The door—a very heavy one, evidently built to resist possible attack—was locked, and there was a heavy, rusty bolt pushed into a massive socket. Chick could have picked the lock and withdrawn the bolt. That would not have been a long or difficult operation. But he had had experiences of this kind before. Therefore, he took another course. “That rusty bolt would screech like a jackass in agony,” he murmured. “I could never get it out of the socket without proclaiming to the whole street what I was doing. I’ll take the liberty of using some others of the ‘Engineer’s’ tools. I’m glad he is in the den, or he might be doing something with them, instead of my making honest use of them.” [64] Chick grinned at his own conceit, as he took out a mechanical, automatic screw driver from the canvas bag in which he kept the implements, each in its own little pocket. With this screw driver he rapidly took out the screws that held the massive socket of the bolt. Then he removed the ponderous box of the lock in the same way. Chick was a good mechanic. He would not have suited Nick Carter otherwise. So he did his work not only swiftly, but noiselessly, and in a workmanlike manner. A regular locksmith could not have done it better. “I’ll have to get back to Patsy, and send him out to telephone,” he said to himself, when he was satisfied that the outer door to the yard was not held by anything save the swelling wood, which kept it jammed against the doorpost, but not too firmly to be dislodged with one good push. “Let’s see! The chief told me just as I was coming out that he would be at police headquarters in Jersey City. I wonder whether I’d better telephone, or whether it wouldn’t be safer to let Patsy go there.” He might have asked this of Patsy, only that he preferred to make up his mind from circumstances, rather than on the advice of anybody—even so shrewd a young fellow as Patsy Garvan. When he had made his way back across the room where the metal still simmered on the funny-looking stove, and was at the door where he had left Patsy, he had determined on what should be done. “Patsy!” “That’s me!” “Anything happened?” “Not a thing. As peaceful as West Point on a summer afternoon.” “Well, get out and see the chief.” “See him? I thought I was to telephone.” [65] “I thought so, too, until I had time to think it over.” “New York?” “No!” growled Chick irritably. “And don’t pretend to be a bonehead, Patsy, because I know better. I’m talking about the Jersey City headquarters. Get to the chief, and tell him he can come right in by the door in the yard at the front of the house. Understand?” “When you say ‘chief,’ you don’t mean the chief of police of Jersey City, do you?” Patsy did not wait for a reply. He just flung this question at Chick to make him mad. Then he hustled away to deliver his message to Nick Carter, who was always the chief to himself and Chick. Patsy had to squeeze through the hole in the cellar wall, but that was easy. “When I get time, I’ll take Patsy to Central Park and dump him headfirst into the lake at a Hundred and Tenth Street,” muttered Chick. “He’s aching for excitement, and he needs cooling off.” Chick decided that it might take twenty minutes for Patsy to reach headquarters and bring Nick and the police back. In the meantime, he might as well rest a little. First he went into the back parlor and took another look through the peephole in the closet at the workmen in the other room. There was no change in the scene. The engravers and others were still busy, while T. Burton Potter continued to loll in the rocker, as if he had not a care in the world. “A change will come o’er the spirit of his dream before he goes to bed,” was Chick’s inward remark, with a slow smile. “He may as well be as comfortable as he can while the wind blows his way. Lord! He is a lazy-looking loafer! Well, I’ll get to the other house, through that infernal cellar hole.” In spite of the fact that there would be an exciting time for Chick in the course of half an hour or[66] so—or, perhaps, because of it—he was quite able to compose himself for a nap without allowing future business to worry him. He went up the stairs to a back room, where Patsy Garvan had rigged up a sort of couch for himself while on watch in the house the night before. It was composed of an empty box and some burlap. Anybody who happened to be fastidious might have found it unsatisfactory. But it suited Chick. He was glad to have anything big enough for him to lie down on. “There’s one thing about this profession of ours,” he soliloquized, “that you don’t find in every kind of work. That is, its variety, as well as its excitement. A fellow never gets dull or lonesome. If he did, I don’t think he would be any good as a detective.” Chick looked at the dirty windows, through which glimmered the faintest reflection from the street arc light already referred to, and was wondering, in a dreamy sort of way, how many feet it would be from the window to the ground, in case it should become advisable or necessary for him to jump out, when he sprang to his feet abruptly, and relieved himself of the two words, “Blithering idiot!” As no one was in the room but himself, it might have been a matter of speculation as to whom he referred, if he had not proceeded rapidly to make it clear. “I am an ass—with long ears! I left that door open—the one leading from the kitchen to the stone hall and front yard door. I know I did. It was shut and locked, with the key in the door. Why in thunder didn’t I lock it when I came through? I guess I must have been in too much of a hurry. If any one goes into that room and sees the door, the beans will all be spilled, that’s sure.” The detective knew it would not be long before somebody would be in the kitchen, to look at the crucible. The door would be found open—and then—[67]— Well, he did not stop to think about what would probably happen in that case. He hustled out of the room and down the stairs. It was quite a trip back to the kitchen. He had to go to the sub-basement, to the cellar, and squeeze through the hole where the bricks had been taken out. Then he would have to climb stairs and make his way through doors, and at every step he might meet from one to six men, who would kill him with as little compunction as they would smash a mosquito. “Fine prospect!” muttered Chick. “But—it’s all in the game!” He gained the kitchen without interference. The molten metal still simmered on the stove. Everything was just as he had seen it on his previous visit. Best of all, nobody was in the place. The person, whoever he might be in charge of the metal, was still attending to matters elsewhere. “The confounded door over there is still open,” continued Chick to himself. “Just as I left it. Well, I’ll soon fix that.” He hastened across the room, closed and locked the door, leaving the key in the door, as before. “Don’t know how I came to do that! It isn’t like me to forget a door when I’m in a place full of crooks. I shouldn’t like the chief to know I’d done it. He’d think I’m going dippy. Well, it’s all right now. That’s a great comfort.” He was halfway across the room to the door by which he had entered, when the latch clicked, and he saw it jump up, indicating that somebody was pressing it down on the other side. “Trapped!” muttered Chick. “Cut off, by Jupiter! Now what am I to do?” <hr class="chap" /></div> [68] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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