“I thought so, too, until I had time to think it over.”
“New York?”
“No!” growled Chick irritably. “And don’t pretend to be a bonehead, Patsy, because I know better. I’m talking about the Jersey City headquarters. Get to the chief, and tell him he can come right in by the door in the yard at the front of the house. Understand?”
“When you say ‘chief,’ you don’t mean the chief of police of Jersey City, do you?”
Patsy did not wait for a reply. He just flung this question at Chick to make him mad. Then he hustled away to deliver his message to Nick Carter, who was always the chief to himself and Chick.
Patsy had to squeeze through the hole in the cellar wall, but that was easy.
“When I get time, I’ll take Patsy to Central Park and dump him headfirst into the lake at a Hundred and Tenth Street,” muttered Chick. “He’s aching for excitement, and he needs cooling off.”
Chick decided that it might take twenty minutes for Patsy to reach headquarters and bring Nick and the police back. In the meantime, he might as well rest a little.
First he went into the back parlor and took another look through the peephole in the closet at the workmen in the other room. There was no change in the scene. The engravers and others were still busy, while T. Burton Potter continued to loll in the rocker, as if he had not a care in the world.
“A change will come o’er the spirit of his dream before he goes to bed,” was Chick’s inward remark, with a slow smile. “He may as well be as comfortable as he can while the wind blows his way. Lord! He is a lazy-looking loafer! Well, I’ll get to the other house, through that infernal cellar hole.”