“Oh I catch that. Well No. — will be watched night and day for a short time. Your young friend’s rather violent exploit may have scared its tenants off. The auto went. Perhaps they went with it. It won’t do to break in at once. We must have some evidence of occupation and a line on the occupants that runs straight with Riddles’ description.”
“But that wretched man? Suppose they kill him. A little less carefulness, Captain, might save him and, under the circumstances, I don’t think I’d be squeamish over precedents.”
“Oh, that team isn’t ready for murder yet—they’re not thinking of it. They’ve kidnapped someone for one reason or another. Bagging him that way showed they wanted something out of him. I’ll place them in twelve hours or so, and if they cover the same size Riddles gave I’ll take the risk and search the house.”
“Of course you’ll let us in, Captain, on the ground floor so to speak?”
“Sure! I’ll tip you on the first peep we hear. But get that boy on his legs; we’ll need him.”
It was just a day and a half later that a policeman brought me a sealed envelope. Of course I knew who had sent it. There was no answer the policeman said, and left. I opened the missive expectantly. I was not disappointed. Its contents were more rapturously thrilling to my journalistic hunger for marvels and mysteries, and those labyrinthine prodigies of subterranean deviltry that Cobb, or Ainsworth, or George Sand revelled in, than any mess of crime I had tumbled on or in, since Joe Horner, our chief city reporter, went through a hatchway in the Bronx and dropped into a hogshead of claret (Zinfandel) with two dead bodies in it!
Captain B.’s note ran: “Riddles corroborated. They’re there; three of them and a squeegee. Up to mischief—perhaps forgery—something like it. Pounce on them tomorrow. We’ve moved like mice, and the trap has been set quietly. Nothing more simple. Guess you might like to be in at the death. Bring Riddles. We break cover at 11 p.m. Meet at the police station * * *”
Riddles was then on the mend, and when I told him how matters stood, the boy smiled grimly, caught my hand and exclaimed: “Good medicine for me, Mr. Link. I feel it to the end of my toes. That’s the tonic I need. Trust me, I’ll be with you, strong and hearty.” He was.
Captain B. had arranged the affair tactfully. He had conveyed his suspicions to the householder on the west side of No. — and had secured his permission to admit three plain-clothes men through his backyard to the backyard of No. —; also his own party of six, with Riddles and myself as press agents, onto the roof, whence we expected to effect an entrance through the roof door or skylight, while a few men on the street would intercept flight in that direction. Riddles was radiant; it was a beautiful tribute to his sagacity; all this had come about through his quick insight, his instantaneous sense of obliquity, alias crookedness, when he saw the quarreling pair on the Public Library steps. As we cautiously climbed over the low parapet separating the two roofs, with only the light of the stars to guide us, not altogether appropriately I recalled Jonathan Wild’s chase of Thomas Dauell over the housetops, and also the burglary at Dollis Hill in Jack Shepard. There were more apposite occurrences in fiction to compare our maneuvers with, but I thought of these.
I had shown to the Captain the pathetic call for rescue scrawled on the paper scrap. It was palpably written by a foreigner, perhaps a German, certainly someone of Teutonic origin, and the paper had been torn from a book, some such technical guide for engineers as I had suggested. It did not interest Captain B. greatly. He told me, before we started out, that the “peg-top” man—a Hercules—the beautiful woman and “Mephistopheles” had all been seen, and no one else, but that dark ruby glass, identical he thought with that used by photographers, had been inserted in the front attic windows, where he suspected the imprisoned man was kept at work in some nefarious trade, from which the trio derived support or profit. As to the criminal character of “the bunch” he had no doubts. The two men almost invariably carried bundles into the house, but none out.