Chapter VII: Into a Net

Chick Carter sized up the interior of the store with a glance. He saw that it was not used for a retail business. Several empty cases stood on the floor, while a nondescript array of toys and novelties of cheap variety filled the shelves and single counter, all more or less dusty and in some disorder.

The only visible occupant of the place was a burly, powerful man of middle age, with reddish hair and features, and with his shirt sleeves rolled above the elbows of his brawny arms. He was clad in overalls and appeared to be engaged in drawing nails from a cover of one of the empty cases.

“Hello! Back again, Finley?” he exclaimed, in guttural tones, when the two men entered, at the same time bestowing an indifferent glance upon Chick.

“Yes, Nolan, but only for the day,” Bart Bailey replied. “Is Murdock around?”

“He’s in the basement.”

“Good enough! I hoped I would find him here. Shake hands with Mr. Donovan. He’s looking for a job, and I have an idea that Mr. Murdock can use him.”

“I reckon that we can use him, all right,” Nolan vouchsafed, with covert significance. “We want to get the right kind of a man.”

“I think I can fill the bill,” said Chick, while he shook the other’s tendered hand.

“Wait here, Donovan,” put in Bailey. “I’ll find out what Murdock thinks about it.”

“Go ahead, sir,” Chick nodded.

Bart turned to the rear of the store and vanished down a narrow stairway.

“What kind of work is to be required of me?” Chick inquired, turning again to Nolan.

“Odd jobs,” was the indefinite reply. “Mostly packing the stuff we send away. We don’t do any retail business.”

“Does Mr. Murdock run the business?”

“When he’s here,” nodded Nolan. “He’s the big finger.”

“Where does he buy all of these things?” Chick inquired, glancing at the counter and shelves.

“Don’t buy them,” said Nolan tersely. “We make most of them. We’ve got a workroom in the basement.”

“I might----”

What Chick would have said was cut short by a shout from below, a command from Bart Bailey.

“Bring Donovan down here, Nolan,” he cried. “Murdock wants to talk with him.”

“All right,” Nolan shouted; then, to Chick: “I’ll turn the key in the door. Some one might steal in and swipe something.”

He strode to the street door and locked it while speaking, and Chick quick to note the significance of all this, seized the opportunity presented. He shifted a revolver to the side pocket of his coat, then followed Nolan down the narrow back stairway.

It led to a basement room of moderate size, with a cement floor and lighted with several incandescent lamps. In none of the four foundation walls that met Chick’s gaze was there any sign of a window. In one corner, however, a stairway led up to another part of the building.

Near one of the walls stood a long, wooden bench, covered with tools and partly finished articles such as Chick had seen in the store. Aside from this bench, two common wooden chairs and a bare table, the room contained no furnishings worthy of mention.

A workman with his sleeves rolled up, a muscular chap in the twenties, was leaning on the bench with a mallet in his hand.

Bart Bailey was seated on a corner of the table.

Near by, occupying one of the chairs, was a bearded, round-shouldered man in gray--the man whom Patsy Garvan had followed from the department store only a short time before.

Nolan stepped aside to let Chick pass, and the latter quickly noticed that he did not return to the store. It was too significant a fact to be ignored, and Chick was never more alert than at that moment.

“This way, Donovan,” Bailey said, a bit curtly. “Here is Mr. Murdock. I have told him about you. He wants to ask you a few questions.”

“All right, sir,” said Chick. “Glad to know you, sir.”

“Very good. Sit down, Mr. Donovan.”

Murdock pointed to the only vacant chair. It was directly in front of him, and scarce three feet away. He sat with his imposing figure bowed slightly forward, with his hands spread on his knees. He had spoken agreeably, but his voice had a hard ring and his eyes a shifty gleam that further put Chick on his guard.

He sat down, as directed, replying respectfully:

“Thank you, sir. I’ll answer any questions you ask.”

“Very good,” said Murdock. “Finley tells me you are out of work and came from Chicago.”

“I did, sir.”

“What were you doing there?”

“I worked in a hardware store.”

“Are you handy with tools?”

“Quite so,” Chick nodded, wondering how the situation would turn. “I have worked as a carpenter at times, though I never learned the trade.”

“You don’t look like a man accustomed to hard work,” said Murdock, smiling through his heavy beard.

“I’ve done my share, sir, for all that.”

“Let’s see your palms. They will tell the story.”

Chick hesitated for only the hundredth part of a second. He now knew what was coming, that the rascal suspected he was gripping a weapon in his side pocket, of which he aimed to make him let go. Chick reasoned on the instant, too, that he was up against desperate odds, that his best move would be to yield to the rascals temporarily, biding his own time to discover their entire game and to turn the tables on them. All this really was no more than he had expected and designed, when he boldly entered the place in spite of the risks involved.

Chick hesitated only for an instant, therefore, and then extended both hands and displayed his palms, as directed.

As quick as a flash, bending forward from the table on which he was seated, Bart Bailey clapped the muzzle of a revolver to the detective’s head.

“Don’t move!” he commanded, with sudden sharp ferocity. “Keep them there, or you’ll be a dead one. We want your hands where we can see them.”

Chick dropped them on his knees and drew up in his chair. Without so much as a glance at Bailey, and apparently not the least disturbed by his weapon, he gazed at Murdock and asked coolly:

“What’s the meaning of this? What’s it all about?”

Murdock’s eyes took on a more venomous gleam and glitter, his voice a more threatening ring.

“You know what’s it all about,” he said sternly. “If you stir foot or finger, you’ll get all that Finley has threatened. You are playing a tricky game and a dangerous one, for it cuts no ice with us. We know you, Carter, and are out to get you--as you’re out to get us!”

Chick coolly removed his disguise and tossed it upon the table.

“That being the case, Mr. Murdock, I’ll sail under true colors,” he said curtly.

“You may as well,” Murdock rejoined, with a sneer. “But don’t get gay, Carter, or you’ll pay the price. Keep your hands on your knees.”

“Don’t be alarmed,” Chick retorted. “I’m not inviting a bullet by opposing you. Do what you like.”

“We intend doing so,” snapped Murdock. “The mistake you made, Carter, was in undertaking to oppose us. You now find yourself neatly trapped.”

“Oh, not as neatly as you imagine,” said Chick. “You have had nothing on me.”

“Nothing on you, eh?”

“Only what I have voluntarily handed you.”

“Rats!” cried Bart Bailey, with a snarl and scowl. “Tell that to the marines. I’ve made a monkey of you, Carter, and you know it.”

“It’s not in you, Bailey, to make a monkey of me,” Chick replied, with a scornful glance at him. “It’s you who were monkeyed last night, when I picked you up in Lexington Avenue and trailed you to Philadelphia, with you none the wiser.”

“That’s insignificant,” said Murdock, checking Bailey with a gesture. “We know all about that. We know just how it was done.”

“Certainly you do,” Chick coolly allowed. “I was aware of that several hours ago.”

“Aware of what?”

“That you knew a detective had trailed this rascal to Philadelphia.”

“You knew it several hours ago?” demanded Murdock suspiciously.

“Yes.”

“I guess not.”

“Punk!” snarled Bailey derisively. “That’s rot! How could he know it?”

“You have another guess, Murdock,” added Chick, not averse to mocking and mystifying the rascals, in spite of the risk it involved. “I assume, too, that you are the man who sent him the information.”

“How sent him?” Murdock sharply demanded, evidently rendered apprehensive by Chick’s repeated assertions.

“It was sent in a code telegram.”

Murdock’s heavy brows knit like frowning battlements over his threatening eyes. He drew forward in his chair, searching Chick’s face more intently.

“How did you learn of that?” he cried, while Bart Bailey looked as if he had been hit with a club.

“I have methods of my own, Murdock, for getting such information,” Chick replied. “For obvious reasons, however, I do not reveal them to crooks.”

“But how could you interpret a code message even if you saw the telegram?”

“Easily.”

“Impossible, unless----” Murdock turned sharply to Bart Bailey. “Has that code book been out of your hands?”

“Not on your life,” cried Bart emphatically. “This is all a bluff. He’s got you on a string. He don’t know half of what he asserts.”

“Don’t I?” questioned Chick, glancing at him again. “I know that you were directed to look out for me, Bailey, and to lure me to New York, if possible, and to a place designated in your code book as the cobweb. This, of course, is the place.”

Murdock uttered an oath, evidently staggered and more alarmed by what he had learned.

“Bolton,” he cried harshly, turning to the man with a mallet, “search this infernal meddler. I’ll find out whether he’s an infernal mind reader, or has a copy of our code in his possession.”

Bolton hastened to obey.

Chick laughed indifferently, and Murdock fiercely added, with both hands clenched in front of the taunting detective.

“If you knew all that, Carter, why have you walked into this trap?”

“Does that surprise you?”

“It appears reckless, not to say absurd.”

“I did it, then, in order to get a line on the identity of you scamps, and to learn just how you are playing your knavish game,” Chick bluntly admitted.

“Oh, is that so?”

“Exactly so.”

“Well, then, you shall learn,” snapped Murdock fiercely. “It will cost you your life, but you shall learn. I’ll make it a point to satisfy your foolhardy curiosity. You shall learn--but at the cost of your life.”

“Suppose we make a beginning, then,” said Chick, a bit sharply. “Let’s both sail under--true colors.”

He reached up quickly while speaking and seized Murdock’s grizzled beard, giving it a violent jerk. It came away in his hand, as Chick had suspected, revealing the hard-featured, smooth-shaved face of--Gaston Goulard.