Chapter IV: The Clew in the Basin

A cry of alarm escaped Old King Brady when he saw the Frenchman.

"Harry," he gasped, "he is trying to kill us."

"There goes the cable!" muttered the boy, and a cold chill darted through him as he heard the ominous snap of the parting strands.

"The safety-clutch may save us, Harry."

"No! It don't work," groaned the boy as the car shot down.

A sickening sensation passed through the pair as the falling car went plunging down at lightning speed.

They expected to get dashed to death at the bottom as they went flying down past the different floors, and heard a fiendish chuckle from the Frenchman above their heads.

Like rats in a trap, the two detectives were held so they could do nothing to aid themselves.

All they could do was to wait for the final crash, and visions of the wrecked car and their bodies crushed to a pulp flashed across their minds.

The desperation of their situation was appalling.

The speed of their fall took their breath away and both instinctively grasped the sides of the car and clung to it tenaciously.

Down three stories they plunged.

Then there suddenly sounded a sharp "click."

The car paused, slid a few feet, then came to a sudden stop.

At the last moment the clutches flew out and tightened on the pilot rods, holding the falling car in midair.

The sudden stopping hurled the detectives to the floor, but they quickly scrambled to their feet, overjoyed at their salvation.

For an instant neither could speak.

To be so suddenly snatched from the very jaws of death was such a strain upon their nerves that they could hardly stand it.

Old King Brady was the first to recover, and glancing upward he saw that their enemy had disappeared from the beam overhead.

"By thunder!" he exclaimed. "La Croix is baffled!"

"I never expected such good luck," replied Harry, delightedly.

"The car is holding, all right."

"Yes, but how are we to get out of it?"

They were caught midway between the second and third floors.

But the parting of the cable had been detected by the engineer and the conductor of an ascending car in the next shaft as the falling elevator flew down past him, and help was coming.

As the news spread, people flocked out in the hall, filled with dread lest the two officers had been killed.

They peered down the shafts through the grill work and when some saw the car, a shout of relief went up, and a man yelled at the Bradys:

"Were you hurt?"

"No. We are all right, so far."

"Wait, and we'll have the car lowered."

Up came men with ropes, and the end of a line was passed down from the floor above the car and Old King Brady made it fast.

When the danger of the car falling was obviated, another gang secured the cut cable, passed it over the drum, brought it down to the roof of the car and spliced it to the piece remaining there.

The elevator was then lowered to the ground floor and opening the door the detectives passed out, none the worse for their adventure.

A crowd of anxious people surrounded them, but they quickly avoided them by dodging into another car and saying to the conductor:

"Top floor--quick!"

Bang! went the gate and up they shot.

Reaching the upper story the detectives made a rush for the room La Croix had been occupying and found it empty.

"The birds have flown!" muttered Old King Brady in disgust.

"No wonder. We were caged up in the elevator so long they had ample time."

"They may have left some clew behind. Let us search the room."

This was done, and in the slop basin they found a letter torn up in small pieces.

Harry carefully gathered up the fragments and put them in his pocketbook.

"It's written in French," he commented, "but it may be of some use. I'll put the pieces together and we'll have it translated."

They failed to find anything else and went downstairs.

Returning to the clerk, they asked if La Croix had been seen.

"He did not come out this way," replied the man, shaking his head.

"Sure?"

"Positive!"

"Well, he and his family are gone."

"Ain't they up in their room?"

"No."

"That's queer."

"Not at all. You heard how the elevator fell with us?"

"Yes."

"Well, La Croix saw us and cut the cable."

"Good Lord! Tried to kill you?"

"Exactly. That's why they fled."

"What a villain that fellow must be."

"Is there any other exit from here?"

"Yes, indeed. I'll have a boy show you."

He rang a hand-bell and a uniformed boy approached, to whom he gave an order and the Bradys were escorted away.

By questioning the help they soon found that the smuggler, his wife and his daughter had left the hotel by another exit.

A policeman in the street had seen them hire a cab and drive away through Broadway at a rapid pace.

Unable to learn anything else, the detectives went home. They had very comfortable apartments and spent the day there piecing out the torn letter so it could be read.

On the following day they had it translated, and read the following startling piece of information:

"Paris, France, May 19.

"My dear La Croix: In reply to yours of the 5th inst., I beg to say
that I can easily meet your daughter at Havre, if she comes over on
the Champagne. I shall then take her to Amsterdam, Holland, and
procure the fifty packages of diamonds. She can then assume a
fictitious name and take passage on the steamer Labrador, to
Canada. You can meet her in Montreal, and the stones can be taken
across the border at Niagara Falls, as you suggest. Should you
follow this plan, wire me at once, and I shall so arrange matters
that the American spies for the Customs officials who are on the
lookout here shall know knothing about the transaction. Everything
depends upon keeping this a secret from them, or they will cable
back to the U.S. inspectors to keep a watch for Clara when she
returns to Canada--"

The letter ended abruptly here, for the rest was missing.

But there was enough to expose the whole plan of smuggling a huge amount of diamonds into the United States.

The Bradys were astonished and Harry said at once:

"This letter proves that La Croix must be the gigantic smuggler whom the Customs department want run down."

"No question about it," replied Old King Brady. "And as we have the details of a scheme he intends to operate, we had better make preparations to nip the plan in the bud, or else to capture the girl smuggler when she makes her attempt to beat the Custom House."

"Are you aware that the steamer Champagne sails for Havre to-day?"

"Does she?" muttered Old King Brady, glancing at his watch. "Well, we'll barely have time to reach her if we go at once. Get a cab and we'll see if we can catch her before she departs."

"Even if we miss her," said Harry, consolingly, "we will be pretty sure to see La Croix on the pier, seeing his daughter off."

"I don't want to arrest him in that case," said Old King Brady, "for if the girl gets away, we'll have to keep the man watched in order to let him lead us to his daughter when she returns. As she's pretty sure to have all those diamonds with her, we can nab them with evidence on their persons, of their smuggling enterprise."

Harry nodded and they hurried out together.

A hack was engaged and they rode over to the French Trans-Atlantic Company's pier on the North river.

By the time the cab reached the dock, however, the steamship's mooring lines had been cast off, the gangplank was down and the vessel was being pulled out into the stream.

The detectives were disappointed.

Eagerly scanning the throng of passengers on the upper deck, they suddenly caught view of Clara La Croix.

The girl was standing in the stern waving her handkerchief and shouting to a stylishly-dressed middle-aged woman on the stringpiece:

"Good-by, mamma!"

"Farewell, Clara--be very careful of yourself, my child!" replied the woman, as she waved her handkerchief back at the girl.

Harry nudged Old King Brady.

"There's her mother," he muttered, "but La Croix has not shown up. He fears arrest now, as he knows we are after him."

"So much the better," replied the old detective, drily. "This woman won't know us. It will therefore be all the easier to follow her undetected."

The steamship soon went down the river and the friends and relatives of the departing passengers began to leave the pier.

Mrs. La Croix was one of the last to go. She did not know that the Bradys were close behind her.