“I guess it’s up to me, by Jove, to have a look at Jim Margate’s place. It’s no crazy bet that Deland and Nell Margate are there, if not the whole knavish bunch. I’ll soon find out.”
Patsy already was acting upon these resolutions.
Nearly an hour later, or soon after five o’clock, found him stealing cautiously along a sparsely settled road within half a mile of the Harlem River, his-features carefully disguised, and his movements those of one having no definite destination in view.
Presently, nevertheless, after crossing a number of vacant lots piled with refuse, and rubbish, Patsy picked his way through the trees and underbrush still covering a belt of land in that section, and finally brought up back of an old stable and dwelling fronting on another road, from which both were somewhat shut in by a few remaining trees. The surroundings were uninviting, however, and the place somewhat isolated.
Having shaped a course that precluded observation from the windows of the old wooden house, Patsy crawled under a fence back of the stable, and succeeded in finding concealment in an old shed near by, from which he could see the back door and windows of the dwelling.
It appeared to be deserted. Most of the faded curtains were drawn down. The door of the near stable was closed, moreover, denoting that it was unoccupied. The yard in front of it and the ill-kept grounds surrounding the house looked desolate and dismal in the waning light of the cloudy November day.
“Gee! it don’t look much like business,” muttered Patsy, after a cautious survey of the place. “I’ve blundered, perhaps, in coming out here. The rascals may have sought shelter somewhere else. They may have other headquarters, where—no, by gracious! those are recent hoofprints in front of the stable. The dirt turned over by the horse’s shoes is hardly dry. But there are no very recent wheel tracks, judging from—by Jove, I think I had better have a look in the stable. I’ll never have a better chance.”
Patsy invariably acted promptly upon a definite impulse. Stealing from the shed, he found an open space under the rear of the stable, half filled with straw and refuse, above which was a trapdoor through the floor. Crawling up amid the festoons of cobwebs, he raised it cautiously and found himself directly under a large wagon.
“There’s no one here,” he murmured, after listening. “That’s a cinch. I’ll go a step farther.”
Drawing himself up through the opening, he dropped[Pg 31] the trapdoor and crept from under the wagon. He then discovered in the dim light that it was—an undertaker’s wagon.