CHAPTER VII
DICK IS MADE A PRISONER
The hallway of the tenement was pitch-dark, the door standing open for a foot or more. From a rear room came a thin stream of light under a door and a low murmur of voices.
"I guess he went to the rear," whispered Dick. "You wait around the corner till I see."
Noiselessly he entered the hallway and walked to the door of the rear room. Listening, he heard an Irishman and his wife talking over some factory work the man had been promised.
"Girk can't be there," he thought, when he heard an upper door open.
"Hullo, Buddy, back again!" muttered a strangely familiar voice, and then the upper door was closed and locked.
Wondering where he had heard that voice before, Dick came forward again and ascended the rickety stairs. They creaked dismally, and he fully expected to see somebody come out and demand what was going on. But nobody came, and soon the upper hall was gained, and he reached the door which he rightfully guessed had just been opened and closed.
"Yes, everything is all okay," were the first words to reach his ears. "But I had a sweet job to find Mooney. He's cracked on music, it seems, and had gone to a concert instead of attending to business."
"But he won't fail us tomorrow morning?" came in a second voice, and now Dick recognized the speaker as Arnold Baxter, his father's worst enemy, who had been left at the hospital in Ithaca with a broken limb and several smashed ribs. Baxter had tackled Dick while the two were on a moving train, and, while trying to throw the boy off, had gotten the worst of the encounter by tumbling off himself.