“Oh, I know that you rascals will not get away with[Pg 36] this job,” Nick sternly interrupted. “I’ll soon have you landed where——”
Guelpa, or Margate, broke in upon him with a terrible oath.
“You will, eh?” he fiercely added. “You’ll find you are wrong. You are depending upon that fellow, Garvan, but we’ve got him, also, as we’ve got you. See for yourself.”
He flung aside the portière that hung across the open door of an adjoining room, then in darkness.
Plainly visible in the light shed through the doorway, however, sat Patsy Garvan, bound and gagged and tied to a wooden chair. This was two hours after he had been transferred from the hotel, and his recovery from the drug Guelpa had injected.
“And that’s not all,” Guelpa fiercely added. “Spring open that panel, Biddle. Let him see—let him see for himself!”
Biddle touched a hidden spring in the wainscoted wall, and a panel flew open.
In the space beyond sat—the two jewel caskets stolen from the Hotel Westgate that morning.
“We’ve not had time to open them, to whack up the swag,” Guelpa went on, as if beside himself with fierce and bitter rage. “There will be time enough for that. We’ve got Garvan and we’ve got you. I’ll send you to the devil on the spot. I’ll give you a dose that will—oh, perdition, Scoville, I’ve left it in my suite. I went out in such a hurry that I forgot it. I must have it. It’s the only thing that will cause death and defy detection. I must have it. I’ll go and get it. Watch me—watch both till I return. And remember the signal—the signal! I’ll send both to the devil. Wait till I return.”
And Doctor Guelpa, after pouring forth these commands with a ferocity that precluded interruption, turned and rushed like a madman out of the house.