“I thoroughly agree with you, Kennedy—if that is what he did,” Nick said, a bit dryly.
“Well, he evidently stabbed Taggart and shot this fellow, Batty Lang, as you call him,” Kennedy confidently vouchsafed. “He must have got away with the suit case, too, though he lost his hat in his flight. How else can you size it up?”
Nick Carter did not inform him. Instead, without replying, he began a closer inspection of Lang’s body, carefully searching his several pockets, in none of which he found anything that appeared to bear in any way upon what had transpired the previous night, or what had led up to it.
Nick noted the probable direction from which the fatal bullet had been fired, however, and also that every chamber of the revolver in the gangster’s rigid hand still contained a cartridge.
“Wait here, Kennedy, both you and Doctor Boyden,” he said, rising after making these investigations. “I shall return in a few minutes. Come with me, Chick.”
Nick led the way from the back door with the last, Chick following him. He then began an inspection of the ground in the rear yard, tracing numerous footprints to the back fence, over which he vaulted.
There the trail appeared to divide, tracks in the greensward showing that one or more persons had fled to the left and through the grounds of an adjoining estate, while others had gone directly through the yard in the[Pg 10] direction of the side street. The distance between the tracks, which were too faint to be of additional value, showed that all of these persons were running.
“Follow those leading to the side street, Chick, and see what more you can learn,” Nick directed, after calling Chick’s attention to them. “I’ll trace the others and rejoin you out there in a few minutes.”
Nick traced his part of the trail through the adjoining grounds, as far as a gravel walk leading to the street on which the residence fronted. There he lost it, though the fleeing men evidently had hurried to the street, where no further traces of them could be found.
Nick then walked around the corner and rejoined Chick in the side street.