“Strange the secret-service men did not find them,” remarked Chick.
The detective laughed quietly, as he took a perfecto from his drawer and clipped off the end.
“It was,” he admitted. “They would have found it soon, no doubt. But Lieutenant Brockton certainly opened his official eyes when I told him you and Patsy had discovered the den. It’s a feather in the caps of both of you.”
“I should like to have seen him.”
“Brockton wanted to make a raid right away. But I persuaded him to wait,” went on Nick. “I know what these raids are. There’s a forcible entry, generally with the breaking down of an iron-lined door, which attracts the attention of the whole neighborhood. Then there’s a rush, and, as likely as not, the very man you want most of all gets away. No raid for mine.”
The detective had his cigar alight by this time, and as he pulled at it steadily, to make sure it would draw properly, he gathered up some of his memoranda and stowed it away carefully in a secret recess under the table.
“It’s true enough that raids don’t always work out well,” agreed Chick thoughtfully. “We lost Bill the Bum just that way. And he got away with about twenty thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry, too.”
“He was drowned in that wreck off Sandy Hook, though,” remarked Nick. “So it didn’t do him much good. You remember that tramp steamer, the Lovely Maud? It was in a collision with a tank steamer. The Lovely Maud went down like a stone, and Bill the Bum, with all his loot, went down with her. Talking about raids, however, we may have to make one, if our own plan doesn’t work out.”
“It will work out!” was Chick’s positive assertion.
“I hope so. Lieutenant Brockton and the chief of police in Jersey City are willing to let me try, at all events.”