Chapter VII: Suspicions Verified

Chick Carter, following the instructions Nick had given him, readily obtained from Doctor Nolan the vial from which Andy Margate had swallowed most of the supposed poison with which he was thought to have committed suicide when cornered by the detectives, yet which evidently had resulted in the extraordinary case brought to Nick’s notice early the following morning, and the true inwardness of which he had been so quick to suspect.

To prove it, however, despite the surrounding circumstances, and to locate and corner Margate again, to say nothing of doing so in time to save the reputations of Senator Barclay and the impulsive American girl who had put herself in a position that threatened to ruin the remaining years of her life--all this was an entirely different proposition.

The discernment of Nick Carter, nevertheless, as well as the wisdom of the course he had shaped, appeared in part in the visit of Chick Carter to the laboratory of the eminent Washington chemist, and in what immediately followed his departure.

It was nearly noon when Chick introduced himself to Professor Arden and stated his mission. He met with a cordial reception, and the chemist soon began an examination of the small quantity of fluid still remaining in the vial.

Chick waited in an adjoining room for more than an hour. Most of this time was passed in reading a magazine found on the table. Ending an article in which he had become interested, Chick replaced the book on the table and glanced incidentially through one of the screened windows overlooking the grounds without and an adjoining side street.

A man who was passing at that moment caught the detective’s eye, and his sinister appearance and somewhat stealthy movements quickly aroused Chick’s suspicions.

He was a slender, cheaply clad fellow in the twenties, wearing a baggy brown suit and a woolen cap, the latter pulled suggestively low over his brow. He peered from under it while passing a boxwood hedge flanking one side of the grounds, and once he paused nearly back of a clump of shrubbery to gaze intently toward the laboratory windows, though the wire screen prevented any view of the interior.

“By Jove, he is sizing up this place,” thought Chick, after intently watching the fellow. “What’s his motive? If it corresponds with his looks, by gracious, it’s sinister enough. What motive can he have in which I do not figure, since he appears to have turned up since I arrived here? If I’m right, and I’d stake a trifle on it, that fellow is a rat that needs watching.”

The man had moved on, crossing the side street and turning an opposite corner. He scarce had turned it, however, when Chick, still watching, saw his bullet-shaped head thrust cautiously around the corner building. It was obvious, too, that his ratty eyes were directed toward the taxicab in front of the chemist’s residence, that in which Chick had come there and for whom the chauffeur was waiting.

Presently the head vanished--but not the detective’s suspicions.

When Professor Arden rejoined Chick a few moments later, he returned the nearly empty vial, saying, with a smile:

“I have retained enough of the fluid to make a thorough analysis, or tests that may possibly reveal its precise nature and properties. I was inclined to doubt, Mr. Carter, the existence of any substance or compound that would have upon the human organism just such effects as you have described in the case of Margate.”

“Nevertheless, professor, Nick feels very sure he is right,” said Chick.

“I now think he may be,” replied the chemist. “I have been experimenting with a guinea pig, using a minute quantity of the fluid, and the effect upon the animal is very similar. He fell almost instantly into a rigid state and appeared to be dead.”

“That was precisely the case with Margate.”

“While I was applying other tests to a drop of the fluid, however, which required most of the time I have been absent, the animal began to revive.”

“So soon probably because of the small quantity of fluid used,” Chick suggested.

“I think so,” Professor Arden agreed. “I am more inclined, now, to credit your suspicions concerning Margate. I cannot definitely determine the ingredients of the fluid at this time, however, and I may not be able to do so at all. I will try later, nevertheless, and will advise you by letter.”

“I will give you Nick’s home address,” said Chick, producing a card. “It’s mighty strange and powerful stuff, all right, whatever it is.”

“You may have heard, no doubt, of the poisons of Exili,” Professor Arden replied. “He was a notorious criminal of the seventeenth century, who knew the art of making the most subtle and deadly poisons, as well as compounds which are said to have had very similar effects upon persons as those you have described. Some of the formulas of Exili are said to have been handed down through generations to the present day, moreover, the secret and sinister possessions of a very few persons. It is not impossible that was the source of this fluid used by Margate.”

“I am well informed concerning Exili and his poisons,” said Chick, smiling a bit grimly. “We had a very extraordinary and sensational case about three years ago, in which one of the Exili poisons figured. There was no doubt about it in that case. You may be right as to this stuff.”

“You shall hear from me later about it,” said Professor Arden, while he accepted his fee and accompanied the detective to the door.

Chick thanked him again and departed. The man in a baggy brown suit had not reappeared, but Chick still had him in mind. He walked briskly out to the taxicab, then paused briefly and said to the chauffeur:

“Has any man spoken to you while waiting?”

“No, sir.”

“Follow my instructions,” Chick directed, apprehending that he might be covertly watched. “Drive straight down this avenue and turn the first corner to the left. After having turned it to a point out of view from here, stop at once and drop me. Then drive on quickly and go about your business. Understand?”

“Sure. That don’t take a very long head.”

Chick sprang into the taxicab, and without looking back he was whirled speedily around the corner, a block from the chemist’s residence. He then sprang out--and the chauffeur uttered an exclamation of surprise.

He did not recognize his passenger.

Chick had put on a disguise and knocked his soft felt hat into an entirely different shape.

“Drive on,” he commanded, giving the chauffeur a bank note. “Move lively and forget the quick change.”

“Bet you!” grinned the driver, speeding away.

Chick returned to the corner and peered cautiously around it.

The man in baggy brown was just descending the steps of Professor Arden’s residence.

“Aha! That does settle it,” thought Chick. “He wanted to know who had called on the chemist, and he went to inquire, probably offering some plausible reason. He evidently found out, too, judging from the celerity with which he is departing. You shall also find, young man, that there are longer heads than yours.”

The seedy young man then was hastening down the avenue in Chick’s direction, but on the opposite side of the broad thoroughfare.

Chick stepped into the side entrance of a near store and watched him from one of the front windows.

The suspect stopped short on the opposite corner and gazed sharply in the direction the taxicab had taken. It then had disappeared. The street was deserted, with the exception of a solitary nurse girl wheeling a baby in a carriage. The man pushed the cap from over his brow and hurried on.

Chick left the store a moment later and followed him.

His quarry turned the next corner east and soon brought up at a trolley line running out of the city. At a stand near by he bought two newspapers, and then waited on the corner for a car.

Chick noticed in which direction he was looking for it to approach, which told him in which direction the man intended going. He then crossed the avenue, mingling with other pedestrians, and waited on the next corner beyond his quarry. Five minutes later he saw the man board an open car, taking one of the front seats, and Chick presently seated himself on a rear one.

The suspect then was absorbed in one of his newspapers. More than half an hour had passed, when, looking up, he quickly folded it and thrust it into his pocket.

The car then had left the outskirts of the city far behind. It was passing through a rural country, quite thickly wooded in sections, and Chick could see in the near distance a road diverging at a slight angle to the right from that of the trolley line.

“He’s going to drop off at that road,” he said to himself, “It’s favorable for me, all right, in that the woods and shrubbery will afford me some shelter.”

Chick had rightly interpreted the man’s movements, for the latter presently signaled the conductor and alighted from the car at the juncture of two roads, at once walking briskly up that to the right.

Chick rode on about thirty yards, then sprang from the moving car and stepped quickly toward the scrubby trees and shrubbery filling the apex of the angle formed by the two roads. Flanking the opposite side of that which the car was following, scattered dwellings could be seen in the distance, but the road to the right appeared to be unsettled.

Somewhat to Chick’s surprise, after stealing in among the low trees to a point enabling him to see the latter road, he discovered his quarry seated on a rock at one side and gazing up the deserted way.

“He has an appointment with some one,” Chick reasoned, noting the man’s expectant expression. “He is going to wait, and it’s up to me to do the same, also to crawl near enough to overhear what may be said. That ought to be easily accomplished, if I can avoid snapping a twig.”

The suspect had unfolded his second newspaper and was beginning to read it.

Chick dropped upon his hands and knees and crept within thirty feet of the man, then settled himself in a thicket that effectively concealed him, though through the twigs and foliage he could plainly see the waiting man.

He could see, too, that he was much amused by what he was reading, and Chick was not slow in suspecting the nature of it.

Twenty minutes passed, also several motor cars, at each of which the suspect gazed sharply when he heard it approaching. He sprang up at length, hearing and seeing another, and Chick felt a thrill of satisfaction, when an inferior, two-seated runabout containing a man and a woman came to a stop near his quarry.

“All three cannot ride away in that trap,” he said to himself. “I can keep an eye on one of them, at least.”

Even before a word came from one of them, moreover, confirming his immediate suspicions, Chick had sized up the couple in the car.

The woman was somewhat showily clad, about thirty years old, and quite attractive, barring her rouged cheeks and indications of dissipation in her sharp gray eyes.

Her companion was a bearded man in an ill-fitting black suit with a frock coat, and with a gray slouch hat on his head. The instant Chick saw him and his garments, he was sure of the man’s identity, despite his facial disguise.

“Margate himself!” flashed up in his mind. “Andy Margate, as sure as I’m a foot high.”

This was confirmed almost immediately by the intercourse that began as soon as the woman, who was driving the runabout, brought it to a stop at one side of the road.

“Ah!” she exclaimed. “You’re here ahead of us, Tony.”

“Sure I’m here,” said the man in baggy brown. “I’ve been waiting twenty minutes.”

“Well, what have you learned, Selig?” Margate demanded, with manifest interest. “You keep quiet, Nance, and let me do the talking.”

“Tony Selig,” thought Chick; then, he rightly inferred: “By their resemblance, too, this woman should be his sister. Nance Selig, eh?”

The man in the road drew nearer the car, replying, with a laugh:

“Oh, I have not been idle, Andy, you can bet on that. You’re in right in one way, but wrong in another.”

“Wrong, eh?” queried Margate, with a snarl. “Tell me the worst first. Wrong in what way?”

“Nick Carter suspects you have fooled him.”

“The deuce he does!”

“But he only suspects, mind you,” Tony Selig quickly added. “He isn’t sure of it.”

“How do you know? How did you learn that?”

“After watching the Deland woman’s house until nearly noon, as you directed, and seeing no one show up, I started out here to report. As I was passing the residence of Professor Arden, the chemist, I saw a taxicab waiting in front of it. I suspected right off the reel that a detective on your case might be there. You know for what, Andy, and I was right.”

“How did you make sure of it?”

“I watched until a man came out and hurried away in the taxi,” Selig explained, with a sly grin. “I reckoned from your description that he was Chick Carter. I made sure of it by ringing Arden to his door and asking him if Mr. Carter had been there. He was a fall guy, Andy, all right. He said that Mr. Carter had just left there.”

“Humph!” Margate ejaculated, scowling. “That did settle it. I feared that the Carters were on to the case.”

“But they only suspect,” Tony Selig repeated. “They are sure of nothing, Andy, nor any of the guns, except that the stiff was stolen. There is no clew to the thieves, nor any doubt of its having been a genuine stiff, as you can see from this newspaper story. Have a look. Here’s the latest edition.”

Margate seized the newspaper and eagerly read the story mentioned. It told only of the theft of the supposed corpse from Fink’s back room, of the ignorance of the police and detectives concerning the identity of the perpetrators of the outrage, and of the deep mystery enshrouding the entire gruesome case.

Margate read it aloud for the benefit of Nancy Selig, and Chick heard every word of it, as well as all of what passed between the three crooks.

“Nick was right, by Jove, in saying nothing about our discoveries in the alley,” he said to himself. “This rascal now will think, indeed, that we are all in the dark.”

This already was apparent in the look of relief that had arisen to Margate’s bearded face. He banged the newspaper with his fist, uttering an oath, and exultantly adding:

“You’re right, Selig, dead right. The infernal dicks know nothing definite. They believe I was dead, they surely believe it, and know only that my body was stolen. They have no idea who stole it, however, not even a shadow of suspicion, or the reporters would have got wise to it.”

“Surest thing you know, Andy,” Selig nodded.

“It’s a safe gamble, too, that the cursed students who queered my game will keep their traps closed,” Margate forcibly argued. “They’ll not dare to confess. Even though mystified by its disappearance, they’ll think themselves well rid of the body. It’s a cinch that the Carters have not tracked them, nor more than suspect the truth, and we still have time to bleed the woman out of a big wad of money.”

“That’s true, Andy, if we waste no time,” put in Nance Selig suggestively.

“Right you are, Nance,” declared Margate, with eyes glowing.

“Get a move on, then.”

“We’ll get the coin. We’ll drive her to the wall. Home with you, Tony, and wait till I return. I’ll be gone only long enough to put Nance in right. She can turn the trick before evening. In the meantime, Tony, we’ll make ready to receive her ladyship--and her boodle. Home with you, Tony, and wait till I show up.”

The runabout, guided, by the woman, was moving rapidly away before the last was said, shouted over his shoulder by the daring and designing criminal.

Chick Carter had more than one reason for lying low and letting the rascal go.