Chapter VI: The Man in a Figured Vest

It was after twelve o’clock when Nick received from Patsy Garvan, the telephone communication informing him what his assistant had learned up to the time he visited the garage, as stated, and this soon was followed by the return of Danny with additional information concerning Patsy’s doings and designs.

“We will wait for his next report, or a communication from David Mack,” Nick said simply.

Chick gazed at him for several moments, but his inquiring look brought no response from the detective.

Nick Carter had, in fact, been unusually absorbed during the long period of waiting. He had been sitting at his desk, gazing vacantly at it, with his brows knit and his mind concentrated upon the case engaging him, weighing all of the circumstances and seeking, as only Nick Carter’s mind could seek, for something under the surface.

Half an hour brought no further report from Patsy, but it brought the expected communication from the banker.

Nick seized the telephone the instant the bell began to ring.

“Hello!” he called.

The answer came quickly:

“This is Mack talking. Is that you, Nick?”

“Yes.”

“I am talking from my private office. I have heard from Redlaw.”

“Tell me. Come on with it.”

“I am directed to go out Westchester way at six o’clock this evening, alone in my runabout, and to follow the New Rochelle road till I am stopped by a man wearing a figured vest and carrying a red silk handkerchief in his hand. That’s all. Not another word was said. What shall I do?”

“Do what he has directed,” said Nick promptly.

“And follow your instructions of this morning?”

“To the letter.”

“I will. Have you any to add?”

“No. I shall wait for your next report.”

“Very good. You shall receive it as soon as possible,” Mack assured him. “I’m game, mind you, for whatever the case requires.”

“You are well chosen, then, for this work,” Nick replied. “Between us, I think we can turn the trick.”

“Me, too! So long.”

“Good-by and good luck.”

Nick hung up the receiver.

“By Jove, that dovetails well with Patsy’s report,” Chick declared, after Nick had told him of Mack’s statements. “The man with a figured vest must be the same Jack Conroy mentioned by Patsy, and the intimate friend of Kate Crandall. Both evidently are in this job, including Duffy’s wife and son, and very likely Duffy himself. What do you think?”

Nick Carter’s reply astonished his chief assistant, even, for it was entirely unexpected.

“I’m hit with a new idea,” said Nick, swinging round in his swivel chair. “Pull up here. I’ll tell you with very few words what I think, Chick, and what you now must do.”

Chick drew up his chair and listened.

What Nick Carter told him and required of him will appear in what occurred a little later.

At three o’clock that afternoon, alone, and carefully disguised, Nick Carter arrived in the neighborhood of the Duffy residence, where he began a stealthy search for Patsy Garvan. He failed to find him, of course, and soon he noticed that the house appeared to be deserted. There was no sign of life through any of the windows, and the door of the garage was closed.

“The birds must have flown,” Nick reasoned, pausing a short distance from the house. “Patsy must have found them here and they must have made an immediate move of some kind, or he would have telephoned to me again. He is trailing them and found no opportunity to communicate with me. If I am right, by Jove, I may be able to clinch my suspicion concerning the Redlaw letter, if it was written in this house. I’ll secure that evidence, at least, if possible.”

Nick had sauntered around to the front of the house while thus sizing up the situation. The conclusion at which he had arrived was a perfectly natural one, and he mounted the steps and rang the bell, feeling quite sure that the summons would not be answered, and that he then could admit himself with a skeleton key and secretly search the house.

Somewhat to his surprise, however, the summons was immediately answered. He heard quick footsteps in the hall. The door was opened boldly, as boldly as if no occupant of the house had any occasion for caution, or fear of a visitor, and Kate Crandall herself appeared on the threshold.

The disguised face of the detective evinced no surprise. He accepted the situation as he found it. He bowed politely and said, with inquiring intonation:

“I am looking for Miss Clara Randall, who was recently employed in the banking house of Madden, Mellen & Mack. I was told that she might be found here. Was I rightly informed?”

Kate Crandall bowed and smiled. There was not a sign of distrust in her dark eyes. One would have said that she had not the slightest cause for fear, though Nick knew very well how audacious a bluff she was capable of undertaking. She had removed her street costume and was clad in a gray house gown of clinging woolen material that served to accentuate the graceful lines of her fine figure.

“Yes, sir, you were rightly informed,” she replied. “I am Clara Randall.”

“My name is Henderson Black,” said Nick. “I am fortunate in finding you. Can you spare me a few minutes of your time?”

“For what, Mr. Black?” Kate questioned, eying him a bit more sharply.

“I have a business proposition to make you,” Nick suavely explained. “I am in need of an expert stenographer for very important work. Don’t say that you will not consider it, please, before having heard my offer. May I come in and explain? I will detain you only a short time.”

“My time is not worth very much just now, Mr. Black,” Kate said, with a laugh. “I was nearly asleep over a dull novel when you rang. Yes, I will hear what you have to say, though I hardly think I care to take on any very arduous work. Come into the library.”

She drew back for him to enter, then conducted him to an attractively-furnished room. An open book was lying on the table. Near by was a large armchair with a fancy silk pillow on the back of it, bearing an indentation where her head had been resting. These seemed to confirm her statements.

An open desk stood near one of the walls. The first article on it to catch the detective’s eye was a large pad of plain paper, remarkably like that on which was written the Redlaw letter.

Nick instantly noticed all of these things, however, and his ears were alert to detect a sound from any other part of the house. None could be heard. He apparently had found the woman alone. He remarked casually, nevertheless, while he took a chair near the table:

“Are we likely to be overheard? My business relates to private political matters, Miss Randall, and what I tell you must go no further.”

“There is no one to overhear you,” said Kate, tossing aside the silk pillow and resuming her seat. “Mrs. Duffy, who lives here, has gone out of town with her son, and her husband never comes home before evening.”

“Ah, very good,” said Nick.

“As far as I am concerned,” Kate added; “I will not repeat anything you confide to me. You may speak freely.”

“I intend doing so,” Nick replied, with more sinister intonation. “To begin with, however, I wish to know something about yourself.”

“About me?”

“Yes, and about the--Needy Nine,” Nick pointedly added.

Kate Crandall heard him with hardly a change of countenance. There was no apprehensive start, no unmistakable betrayal of how hard she was hit by his ominous words.

Though he thoroughly despised her, Nick could not but admire the nerve of this woman. He could detect only a quick dilation of her searching black eyes and a sudden deeper paleness in her cheeks. These were the only signs of her secret perturbation, and her voice, when she replied, was as steady as his.

“The Needy Nine?” she said inquiringly.

“Yes, the Needy Nine,” Nick repeated.

“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Black.”

“You don’t?”

“Surely not. You are talking Greek to me,” Kate declared. “I never heard of any Needy Nine.”

“Nor of a man named Ralph Redlaw?”

“No, never.”

“Well, well, I must be mistaken, then.”

“You certainly are, sir, if you think I know anything about such persons. I am all in the dark as to your meaning.”

“Possibly, Miss Crandall.”

“Randall, sir.”

“I said Crandall--and that is your name,” Nick insisted. “Furthermore, since I am not inclined to mince matters, I will inform you that my name is not Henderson Black. You will readily remember it, I think, if I remove these slight adornments.”

Nick deftly removed his disguise with the last and tossed it upon the table.

Kate Crandall shrank slightly, with brows knitting to a quick frown over her darkly glowing eyes. Her pallid face took on a look of scorn, of bitter hatred, but she replied, without stirring from her chair:

“Oh, it is you, Nick Carter, is it?”

“I thought you would remember me,” said Nick dryly. “It is some little time since we met.”

“Not nearly as long as I would have wished,” snapped the woman. “I have no love for you, Carter, and well you know it. What’s the meaning of this masquerade, anyway? Are you out again to make trouble for me? Haven’t you done enough before?”

“All the troubles you have had, Miss Crandall, you made for yourself,” Nick retorted. “As for masquerading, why have you been posing under a fictitious name here and while in the employ of Madden, Mellen & Mack?”

“Because you made my own name notorious,” Kate informed him, with bitter asperity. “I could not get employment under my own name. A woman must live decently--though infernal meddlers like you make it next to impossible. What do you want here, anyway?”

“You know what I want,” Nick said, more sternly. “I want to know what you and your confederates have done with John Madden’s little daughter, Amy Madden.”

“Done with her? I don’t get you,” Kate declared. “What do you mean by--done with her?”

“You know what I mean. You abducted her.”

“Abducted nothing!” snapped Kate. “I don’t know what you are talking about. If you are out to frame me up in a job of that kind, Carter, you have bit off more than you can chew. I can prove----”

“Disprove is what you will have to do,” Nick curtly interrupted.

“What do you mean?” scowled Kate. “Come across plainly.”

“I’ll make it plain enough to you,” Nick retorted. “I happened to see the woman who pretended to faint in Central Park yesterday afternoon. I remained with the nurse after we found that the Madden girl had been stolen. I went with her to the Madden residence, and I was there when one of the abductors talked by telephone with John Madden--or thought she did.”

“Thought she did!” echoed Kate involuntarily.

“Exactly,” Nick nodded. “But she did not talk with John Madden. She talked with me--and I recognized her voice. It was your voice, Kate Crandall.”

“Rats! Nonsense! You are talking through your hat,” Kate cried, with inelegant defiance, though her cheeks were ghastly and her thin, cruel lips as gray as ashes.

“Oh, no, I am not,” Nick insisted. “I heard----”

“You heard nothing of the kind,” Kate broke forth angrily. “I was not near Central Park yesterday afternoon. I can prove an alibi. Recognized my voice, indeed! I can refute any such evidence as that, Carter, and you can bet your boots on it. You’re not going to frame me up in this way, take my word for it.”

“Your word, Kate, isn’t worth the breath that utters it,” Nick replied.

“That’s only your opinion,” she snapped back at him.

“I expected you to deny everything in connection with this job, but I am gradually weaving the net around you,” Nick added. “You will also deny, of course, that you know anything about this letter.”

He drew it from his pocket while speaking and spread it open for her to look at--the pencil-printed Redlaw letter.

Kate Crandall gazed at it for a moment with flaming eyes, then tossed her head and burst out laughing--a bitter, scornful, defiant laugh, so utterly void of mirth that it grated harshly on Nick’s ears.

“What is it?” she demanded. “Something that you have cooked up, Carter, with a view to putting me into the soup. I don’t want to read it. I care nothing about it, know nothing about it, and you may do what you like with it and go to the devil!”

“You never saw it before, did you?”

“No, never.”

“We’ll see about that. Keep your seat, Kate, and keep your hands on your lap, where I can see them,” Nick sternly commanded. “If you move either of them, I’ll put you in irons.”

“Irons! What do you mean by----”

“I mean what I say,” Nick sharply interrupted. “Obey me, or you’ll pay the price.”

“But----”

“There aren’t any buts. I think I can verify my assertion. I came here for that purpose and many others equally important. You keep quiet.”

Nick reached over to the desk while speaking and took from it the pad of paper mentioned.

With an eye on Kate Crandall all the while, he compared the size of the printed sheet with the pad. It corresponded exactly.

From a little tin box brought from his business office, Nick then sprinkled the quantity of dry black dust over the face of the pad, which he then held at a slight angle and blew the dust from the surface.

Most of it was dispersed with a single breath. There remained, in fact, only the particles that occupied the faint indentations, scarcely perceptible before, caused by the pressure of a pencil through the printed sheet that had been removed from the pad--lines and letters which the black dust now brought out quite vividly.

The face of the pad, in fact, now presented quite a legible likeness of the Redlaw letter--so like it that further denial was out of the question.

Nick turned the pad and displayed it to the watching woman.

“What say you now?” he asked sternly. “Out with it! What have you to say?”

“If it’s all the same to you, Carter, I’ll do the saying at this stage of the game.”

The last did not come from Kate Crandall, who looked as if turned to stone by the detective’s utterly irrefutable discovery.

The interruption came, instead, from a man who flung aside a portière masking a doorway, and quickly entered the room--a well-built, dark-featured man, wearing glasses and a short, pointed beard.

He also wore, as Nick was quick to notice--a figured vest.