Chapter IX: Chick Carter’s Quest

There were reasons, of course, for the swift sequence of sensational episodes of that morning, as there are reasons why the maelstrom so fiercely swirls on certain tides. There is always turbulence and violence when strong tides meet.

It was after nine o’clock when Chick Carter approached the rented home of the Baron Esterveldt and his wife, as well as the beautiful snake who was posing as their orphan relative.

It was, as Garland had said to Nick, a most attractive place. A stately stone residence well in from the street, with an environment of beautiful grounds, shaded with fine old trees and adorned with ornamental shrubbery. Rounded and perfectly kept driveways led to a stable and a commodious garage, beyond which a stone wall divided the estate from a rear street.

Chick turned his steps in that direction after sauntering by the front of the house, taking the opposite side of the fashionable street. He could see no one at any of the windows, many of which were partly open for ventilation at that hour of the morning.

Upon entering the back street, however, where the wall and considerable intervening shrubbery served to conceal him, he obtained a good view of the back of the house, and he then discovered the two persons he was chiefly seeking.

The sunshine lay warm and bright on a broad rear veranda. In one of several large willow chairs was seated the massive, bearded man whom Nick had seen in the restaurant the previous night, and afterward described to his assistants. He was reading a morning newspaper.

Walking to and fro as if for exercise, Irma Valaska also was plainly seen, with her hands clasped behind her and her graceful, sinuous figure clad in a close-fitting blue street costume. Madame Valaska always made it a point to be prepared for the street at a moment’s notice. It was the precaution of conscious peril.

“By Jove, there they are,” thought Chick, when his gaze fell upon them. “That big fellow must be the Baron Esterveldt. There’s no question as to the identity of the woman. If anything comes off here this morning, it’s a safe gamble that one or both of them will figure in it. Having got my eye on them, therefore, I’ll find a concealment from which I can safely watch them.”

Chick did not find it difficult to do so. Cautiously scaling the wall near one corner of the rear grounds, he found a shelter back of a thick hedge dividing the estate from that adjoining it, a point enabling him to easily see the house and the entire rear grounds.

“Now, by Jove, I’m ready for whatever turns up,” he said to himself. “If Nick is right, and it’s long odds that he is not far from the truth, there ought to be something doing this morning.”

Nearly two hours passed, however, before his vigil was rewarded.

The Baron Esterveldt had, in the meantime, finished reading his newspaper. He lingered briefly to talk with his companion, then arose ponderously and entered the house.

Chick was too far away to hear anything that passed between them, but their earnestness during the brief conversation convinced him that they were anxious and apprehensive.

Left alone on the veranda, Irma Valaska took the chair the man had vacated and began to read the newspaper he had left for her.

Something like a quarter hour passed and then the ball began rolling in earnest.

Glancing toward the back street, Chick discovered a man moving cautiously near the wall, pausing at intervals to gaze over it in the direction of the house, and acting in a way much too suspicious to be disregarded.

This man was, as may be inferred, Larry Trent.

Chick changed his position slightly in order to watch him.

Presently Trent arrived at a point nearly back of the garage, and he then discovered the woman seated on the veranda. He at once leaped over the wall and darted behind the garage, from which nearer point he gazed out at her.

“The game is opening, all right,” thought Chick, who was some fifty yards from the garage, that being on the opposite side of the grounds. “But who the deuce is the fellow? He appears to know the woman by sight, at least, yet fears for some reason to approach her. By Jove, he may be one of the crooks who assaulted Dillon and got away with the portfolio. He may have seen Irma Valaska in the touring car that evening, and in other respects a stranger to her.”

This was confirmed almost within a moment, and it gave Chick a further hint at what may be in the wind.

Larry Trent stepped out from a rear corner of the garage and whistled to the woman.

Irma Valaska looked up quickly and saw him. She dropped her paper, gazing curiously at him, and Trent beckoned for her to join him.

The woman hesitated only for a moment. She seemed to anticipate why she was wanted. She threw aside the newspaper, then hurried down the veranda stairs and out over the driveway.

Chick Carter then saw plainly that they met like strangers.

For about five minutes they stood talking with intense earnestness, Trent doing most of it and frequently pointing and gesticulating emphatically, and all the while Irma Valaska listened with a steadily deepening frown.

Suddenly they parted, and the woman ran back to the house.

Trent darted to the wall and hurried through the back street.

Chick Carter came to a quick decision--that he would follow the man.

What little he had seen convinced him that Trent was back of, or at least directing, whatever business was to be done that morning.

Chick crept from his concealment, therefore, and within half a minute was on the track of the man.

If he had waited about three minutes, he would have seen Irma Valaska rush out to the garage again, from which she quickly sped away alone in an electric runabout.

She had been warned in accord with the instructions of Andy Margate, and she was away at top speed to confer with Captain Casper Dillon.

Upon stopping in front of this house, however, she became habitually crafty and discreet. Instead of ringing the doorbell, she stole in over the side path leading to the rear door and by the partly open French window, at which she arrived just in time to hear the conclusion of Nick Carter’s interview with Dillon, with the result already depicted.

Hardly a minute later, Tom Carney approached the house, bent upon warning Dillon, as Trent already had warned Irma Valaska. Carney saw the runabout in front of the house. He became discreet, also, and crept into the yard and nearly to the French window.

Turning a near corner three minutes later, still in pursuit of Larry Trent, Chick Carter saw the two men meet in front of the house. He drew back and watched them. He saw the runabout, but he had no reason to suppose that it had brought Irma Valaska to the house, nor did he then know that it was where Captain Dillon lived, or that Nick might be there.

Trent and Carney talked in earnest whispers for several moments, then both hurried away.

Chick’s suspicions were redoubled, and he now proceeded to shadow both.

The two men proceeded posthaste to the dwelling in which they had left Andy Margate and Patsy Garvan.

Chick paused in the narrow street after they had disappeared into the court, and began to size up the inferior house and its surroundings. He wondered why they had come there. He decided to get a look at the rear of the house, but he did not steal into the court, as Patsy had done. Instead, he entered an adjoining yard, that of an express stable, and he scarce had passed back of the fence dividing it from the dwelling, when he heard the voices of the men just leaving the house.

Quickly peering through a crack in the board fence, moreover, he saw Andy Margate and recognized him.

Margate was speaking in his characteristic cold and confident fashion while the three men passed out of the rear yard and through the alley.

“There’ll be time enough, if the woman has held him up and Dillon got the bracelets on him,” he was saying, every word of which was plainly heard by the listening detective. “We can make a deal with them and get a good bit of coin, and then we’ll bolt for other parts. I have fixed that whelp in the kitchen so that he can’t escape and queer our game. He’ll stay till we return, and----”

Chick Carter could hear no more, nor needed to hear more. He knew well enough, now, at whose house the runabout had stopped, whom it had brought there, and what probably had occurred.

Chick knew, too, knowing what Patsy’s mission had been that morning, to what whelp Andy Margate had referred.

Chick waited only until the three men had vanished down the street, and he then clambered over the fence and into the yard back of the house. He did not stand upon ceremony after having assured himself with a few swift glances that the house was deserted--barring its one captive occupant. He beat out a pane of one of the kitchen windows with his revolver, then entered the room and--found Patsy Garvan, gagged and bound, hand and foot, on the floor of a small closet.

Though their meeting was an exultant one, and Patsy’s surprise all that may be imagined, they spent but little time in congratulations. A very few words, moreover, told each what had been learned by the other, as well as how the situation then stood.

“Gee! there’s nothing to it,” said Patsy finally. “We can reach Dillon’s house nearly as quickly as those three fellows. We can nail the entire gang.”

“Stop a bit,” Chick objected. “If they are going to attempt making a deal with Dillon and the woman, there will be time enough for us.”

“Time for what?” questioned Patsy.

“Time to search this house,” said Chick. “It evidently is where the crooks have been quartered. We may find what we want.”