Chapter V: Nolan Makes a Discovery

Jerry Nolan proved as good as his word, in so far as what he had been directed to accomplish was concerned.

He followed Nick Carter and Lord Waldmere from the quarters of the loan company, and something like an hour following their departure after their apparently vain mission, Nolan put in an appearance in the upper section of Amsterdam Avenue, where he had been directed to await the coming of Mr. Morris Garland.

If one were to have judged from the expression on Nolan’s sinister face, however, one would have felt reasonably sure that he could not be wisely trusted, that he had sized up the circumstances from his own evil standpoint, and was bent upon taking further advantage of them than he seemed likely to derive. In other words, Nolan appeared to suspect that there was something crooked in the wind, and was resolved to make the most of it.

All this would have been even more obvious to an observer of Nolan’s actions upon approaching the appointed rendezvous.

He did not wait on the corner, as he had been directed. Instead, he slunk around it, apparently watching the pedestrians within his range of vision in the avenue, and presently he stole over to an opposite doorway, which seemed to afford a more desirable vantage point, and from which he continued his sinister vigil.

Presently he sighted among the comparatively few people then in that part of the avenue the man he was expecting. He recognized him at once, though he then was nearly a block away and on the opposite side of the thoroughfare.

There could be no mistaking the tall figure and dark, cadaverous face of the head manager of the Imperial Loan Company.

Nolan’s eyes lighted when Garland appeared in the near distance. One would have said that he was thinking of the reward for the scurrilous work he had agreed to do.

“Here’s where I’ll get mine, all right,” he said to himself. “I’ll make him settle sooner or later. I reckon I’d better hike over to the corner where I’m to meet him, or he might suspect that I----”

Nolan’s train of thought was brought to an abrupt end by a sudden, unexpected move of the other.

Morris Garland turned from the sidewalk and quickly crossed the avenue. He then walked quite slowly, with his gaze directed to the side from which he had come, and once he paused for a moment to gaze at the door and windows of an opposite house, one of a long brick block.

Nolan took a look at it, also, but he could discover nothing warranting Garland’s manifest interest in the house.

The door was closed. The curtains at most of the windows were drawn down. Some of the windows were dusty, and the front steps had not recently been swept. The house looked, in fact, aside from its furnishings, as if it was unoccupied.

“What’s hit him, now?” Nolan asked himself. “Why is he sizing up that crib? Nobody home but the gas, and that’s leaking out. I wonder----”

Another move by Garland broke Nolan’s train of thought.

Garland quickly recrossed the avenue, then hastened up to the appointed corner, glancing sharply in all directions.

“Looking for me,” Nolan tersely thought, slinking back in the doorway. “I’ll let him look for half a minute and see what he’ll do next.”

Garland did not look as long as half a minute. He evidently assumed that Nolan had not yet completed his work and arrived there. He turned abruptly and hastened to a house on the opposite corner of the cross-street, entering with a key.

“That must be where the bloke lives,” Nolan reasoned. “That’s why I was told to come up here to report. I’ll see--huh! there he is again.”

Nolan caught sight of him at one of the front windows. He could see his dark face between the lace draperies. He watched it intently, with even a more sinister look in his own keen eyes.

Garland evidently was watching for the expected man.

“I’ll sneak out when he isn’t watching, and then show up on the corner,” Nolan said to himself. “He won’t be wise, then, to the fact that I got here first. I’ll put something over on him, all right, or I’ve doped out this business all wrong.”

Something like five minutes later, after waiting for a favorable opportunity, Nolan appeared on the street corner opposite Garland’s residence. He had been waiting only a moment when the latter emerged from the house and hastened over to join him.

“Well, you’re here, Nolan, at last,” he said, a bit curtly.

“Sure I’m here, boss,” Nolan nodded. “You can always bank on my making good.”

“Have you done what Hart directed?”

“The geeser who hired me? Yes, of course. I sure have done it. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here,” said Nolan, with an expressive leer.

“Well, what did you learn?” Garland demanded, more sharply eying him.

“I followed the two blokes down Fifth Avenue about three blocks, but I couldn’t get next to anything they were saying,” Nolan proceeded to report. “They parted on a corner, and then I followed the big guy, him as put the peppery spiel in the pawnshop.”

“Where did he go?”

“Over to a house in Madison Avenue.”

“Did you find out his name?”

“Sure I did,” Nolan declared, much as if such a question was needless. “Trust me for that. I was wise to it, all right, when I piped him going in that crib.”

“Who is he? What do you know about him?”

“He’s a fly gun, boss; that’s what he is. He’s the biggest squeeze in the whole dick outfit. His name is Carter.”

“Not Nick Carter?”

“That’s what.”

“Are you sure of it, absolutely sure of it?”

“As sure as if a house fell on me,” Nolan forcibly asserted. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve had him after me more’n once. He was made up with grease paint and spinach, all right, but I was wise to his true mug when he went up the steps and into the house. I knew before where the dick lived. What’s the game, boss? I could help you further, if you fancied putting me wise.”

Garland’s dark face had, upon learning the name of Waldmere’s companion that morning, taken on a look of more serious concern. It vanished almost instantly, however, and his teeth met with a vicious snap, smacking defiance, which evidently impelled Nolan to venture offering his further assistance.

Garland received the suggestion with a darker frown, however, and quickly shook his head.

“There isn’t any game, my man,” he said, quite sternly. “You put that idea out of your head, and keep it out. You were not employed for this work because of any game, but because we had no one else whom we could send conveniently at that time.”

“Beg pardon, boss,” Nolan quickly responded. “I’m wise, all right, now that you’ve put me next. It was the two coveys, Carter and the other gink, whom you think were playing some kind of a game.”

“That’s just the size of it,” Garland hastened to assure him.

“I’m wise, all right, boss, now that you’ve told me.”

“Both men were strangers to me,” Garland added, in an explanatory way. “We suspected them of trickery and wanted to learn who they were, or more particularly the one you say is Nick Carter.”

“You can bank on that, boss.”

“It’s all right, then, no doubt, for Nick Carter would not have engaged in any crooked work,” Garland proceeded. “He must have had some other object in view. I shall probably be informed sooner or later. What do I owe you for your services?”

“That’s up to you, boss,” said Nolan, apparently content to drop the matter and accept what was offered, as well as the explanation just made.

“Will a ten-dollar note pay you?” questioned Garland, taking out a roll of money.

“Sure thing, boss, and then some.”

“Let it keep your mouth closed, also,” Garland added, stripping off a bank note from the roll. “I wouldn’t want Carter to think I have any reason to have suspected him.”

“I’m dumb,” Nolan assured him, eagerly accepting the money.

“You will say nothing about it, eh?”

“On my word.”

“Not even if----”

“Forget it!” Nolan cut in pointedly. “Forget it, boss; I have.”

“Very good,” Garland said approvingly. “See that you don’t recall it.”

He turned away with the last, quickly crossing the street and entering his residence. From one of the windows, however, he proceeded to watch Nolan down the avenue, until the seedy, sinister fellow vanished around a distant corner.

But Mr. Jerry Nolan was nothing if not crafty. He did not so much as glance back before turning the corner. Nor did he then pay further attention to Garland to see whether he left his house.

As he was passing that at which the pawnbroker had paused to gaze, however, Nolan glanced furtively at the door. He saw there was no name plate on it. He saw the dust on the steps and the soiled windows on the second floor, and he came to a perfectly natural conclusion.

“There’s been something doing in this crib, or that Pawnee Indian would not have had so much interest in it,” he said to himself. “It appears to be unoccupied. I’ll nose around a bit and make sure of it. Then I’ll find out whether there’s only ten bucks for me in this job.”

Nolan fixed in his mind the precise location of the house by counting from the end of the block. He then walked around to the next street, from which he stealthily picked his way through an alley until he could see the back of the suspected dwelling.

It would have confirmed the suspicions of any discerning man. The drawn curtains, the soiled windows, the closed shutters of those in the rear yard--all denoted that the house, though furnished, had not been recently occupied, unless for some covert purpose.

Nolan promptly came to another conclusion--that he would sneak into the house and see what more he could learn.

He went about it with the skill and caution of a professional sneak thief, which he looked more like than anything else. He crept through the alley and into the yard back of the house, where he crouched briefly under the high board fence to study the back windows of all the near dwellings.

Feeling sure that he had not been seen, he then took several skeleton keys from his pocket, quickly selecting one which he thought would serve his purpose.

It did.

Within half a minute Nolan had quietly unlocked the rear door and stepped noiselessly into a back basement hall, closing the door after him.

There he waited and listened, scarce breathing, until five full minutes had passed.

Not a sound came from any part of the house.

Not a sign of life could be seen in the dusty, dimly lighted hall.

Nolan then crept up the narrow stairway, still listening and alert.

There seemed to be, however, no occasion for such exquisite caution. Nolan reached the next floor, that on the level with the front street. He peered into one room after another, but discovered nothing wrong.

The kitchen looked cold and out of commission. The shutters were closed. The range and iron sink were smeared with vaseline to prevent rusting. Dust had collected on them, and they looked gray and dirty.

The dining room was uninviting. The sideboard was destitute, the polished table bare. The library, sitting room, and parlor, all were in order, but dim, cheerless, and deserted.

Nolan crept up to the next floor.

He peered into two front chambers, both neatly furnished, but he saw nothing of special interest.

He then stole toward the rear of the house.

He came to the open door of an interior room, one having no window. It was lighted only from the hall, save the artificial light, then switched off.

Nolan stopped and peered into this dim bedroom. Something on the unopened bed caught his eye--and Nolan involuntarily caught his breath.

He beheld a motionless figure, clad in a dark-blue suit, with shapely white hands crossed on its breast, with upturned, hueless face, as colorless as if death had lately claimed her--the face and figure of a surpassingly beautiful woman.