“Oh, he’s not kicking. He’s all right, Gridley, from his toes up,” Magill insisted. “He knows what he’s doing.”
The blinded rascal never spoke more truthfully.
Patsy already had turned one of the cleverest tricks of his exceedingly clever career.
All the while during the heated discussion, which had absorbed the entire attention of the four crooks, Patsy had been tapping with his lead pencil on the metal mouthpiece of the telephone.
He had so placed the instrument near the pile of books that they lifted the receiver sufficiently to let its hook rise and make a connection with the number he thrice had shouted—chiefly, of course, for the ears of the exchange operator.
The position of the telephone was not suggestive of the ruse. One would have observed only by chance that the books raised the receiver.
The tapping with a pencil was not noticed by either of the four crooks.
The quick, intermittent taps sped instantly over the wire. They were the taps distinctly heard by Nick Carter in his business office. They conveyed to him what Patsy could not vocally impart—this tapped communication by the ordinary telegraphic code, with which Nick and all his assistants were perfectly familiar:
“Cornered. Stone house. Baldwin Road, Westchester. Half mile east of Granger settlement. Rush. Will hold up gang if——”
Patsy had ended it abruptly.