“You hadn’t been in there more than a minute before a chink came strolling past the house, and he met another one at the corner. Then two more came, and two more after that. They did not all stay in a bunch, but I saw them all speak to each other.”
“What about the man with the scar that the chief wants?” put in Chick.
“I’m coming to that. The chinks were all watching the Anderton house in a casual kind of way, but all at once I found two of them were missing. What was funny about that was that they did not walk away. I saw the whole six in front of the house at one moment, and the next, when I went to count them, there were only four.”
“What had become of the other two?”
“I don’t know. But that wasn’t all of it. While I was wondering where they had gone, I’m a chink myself if two more didn’t vanish the same way.”
“But they must have gone somewhere,” interposed Nick Carter impatiently. “They weren’t swallowed up by the sidewalk.”
“That’s what they seemed to be,” insisted Patsy. “However, I wasn’t going to stand anything like that without trying to call the bluff. So I walked down the avenue for a block, under the trees, against the park fence, and then crossed over. I came moseying along past Anderton’s, and there was my two Mr. Chinks.”
“What were they doing?”
“Just coming slowly along, chattering to each other. I don’t know much chink lingo, but I’m on to some of their words, and I heard one of them say he’d had another fight. The other one asked him what about. Then came something I couldn’t make out, but I caught the chink word for smoothing iron.”
“Yes?”