Involuntarily, as it were, he had turned his head to look in the direction indicated by his companion.
Bannon’s hand then leaped from his side pocket. It was gripping the barrel of a revolver. It rose and fell like a flash, the butt of the weapon landing with a sickening thud squarely on Patsy’s head.
He went down and out and into dreamland as quickly and completely as if felled with an ax.
CHAPTER VII.
INTO A TRAP.
To one not versed in the detective’s art, the announcement of Nick Carter that he was going on a still-hunt after Stuart Floyd would have sounded like a vain and vaunting assertion.
To hunt up one man among the million in New York, a man presumably aware of the fact that he was wanted by the police, and therefore having a potent incentive to keeping out of sight—to attempt to hunt up such a man would seem to a novice a vain and hopeless undertaking.
None knew better than Nick Carter, however, the underworld and the ways of its crooks.
Nick did not seek Floyd in any of the haunts to which such criminals sometimes resort. He knew there would be nothing in that.
He reasoned, however, that Floyd would leave no stone unturned to find out what investigations were being made and what was known and suspected about the robbery, and Nick was much too keen to overlook the probability that the desired information might be covertly sought in the railway yard, when Frank Gilbert and McLauren returned to the freight car to remove the remaining cases.
This required two trips by the couple, it being impossible to take them away in a single load, and it was during their second visit to the car that Nick put in an appearance—or, rather, did not put in an appearance.