“Out with the lights, Patsy!” he shouted. “Smash the bulbs!”
Patsy’s revolver swung upward like a flash.
There was a crash of breaking glass—and the subterranean chamber was in darkness.
CHAPTER IX.
BY THE AIR LINE.
Nick Carter arrived early that afternoon in the big department store of Mantell & Goulard, and several circumstances determined, as he had predicted to Patsy that morning, the course he afterward shaped.
One was the fact that, for the reasons already presented, he had received no communication from Chick and knew nothing about his movements.
Another was the fact that he could find no sign of Patsy Garvan in any part of the great store.
A third was the fact that Gaston Goulard was absent from his office, and that his whereabouts was unknown, as Nick learned upon talking with Frank Mantell and his father, which he then had decided to do, and both of whom he found in the private office of the senior partner.
Nick then learned, too, of the theft that had been committed in the receiving room that morning, about which Goulard had expressed himself so forcibly after apparently vainly investigating it.
Nick smiled a bit grimly after gathering these several points, and now suspicions began to arise in his mind.