Trent and Carney talked in earnest whispers for several moments, then both hurried away.
Chick’s suspicions were redoubled, and he now proceeded to shadow both.
The two men proceeded posthaste to the dwelling in which they had left Andy Margate and Patsy Garvan.
Chick paused in the narrow street after they had disappeared into the court, and began to size up the inferior house and its surroundings. He wondered why they had come there. He decided to get a look at the rear of the house, but he did not steal into the court, as Patsy had done. Instead, he entered an adjoining yard, that of an express stable, and he scarce had passed back of the fence dividing it from the dwelling, when he heard the voices of the men just leaving the house.
Quickly peering through a crack in the board fence, moreover, he saw Andy Margate and recognized him.
Margate was speaking in his characteristic cold and confident fashion while the three men passed out of the rear yard and through the alley.
“There’ll be time enough, if the woman has held him up and Dillon got the bracelets on him,” he was saying, every word of which was plainly heard by the listening detective. “We can make a deal with them and get a good bit of coin, and then we’ll bolt for other parts. I have fixed that whelp in the kitchen so that he can’t escape and queer our game. He’ll stay till we return, and——”
Chick Carter could hear no more, nor needed to hear more. He knew well enough, now, at whose house the runabout had stopped, whom it had brought there, and what probably had occurred.
Chick knew, too, knowing what Patsy’s mission had been that morning, to what whelp Andy Margate had referred.
Chick waited only until the three men had vanished down the street, and he then clambered over the fence[{38}] and into the yard back of the house. He did not stand upon ceremony after having assured himself with a few swift glances that the house was deserted—barring its one captive occupant. He beat out a pane of one of the kitchen windows with his revolver, then entered the room and—found Patsy Garvan, gagged and bound, hand and foot, on the floor of a small closet.