A Sharper's Downfall; Or, Into the Net

by Nicholas Carter

In the meeting of Seaman, Elwell and the one Patsy said was Lannigan, Nick saw strong confirmation of the theory that he had been inclined from the first to believe.

That was that one at least of the promoters who, on the inventor’s death, had tried and failed to get hold of the drawings and models through the widow, was now engaged upon the desperate enterprise of hiring a burglar to enter the house of Mr. Herron and steal them.

As a result of Chick’s investigation, it appeared that Seaman was the only man likely to engage in such an enterprise, although nothing had been discovered that in the slightest degree connected him with that burglary.

His own investigation as to Elwell, the lawyer, had led him to suppose that the lawyer had seized in the death of Pemberton, the inventor, and the ignorance of the widow as to business matters, an opportunity to increase his own financial gains by a control of the model and drawings.

But all of this was simply the result of shrewd suspicion, in which there had been nothing pointing to who had entered the house, nor anything even hinting at a conspiracy between the lawyer and the promoter on the one side and the burglars on the other.

Patsy’s experiences of the day, however, had supplied, if not knowledge, at least suspicion as to who that burglar was.

Now, the meeting of the three in a part of the city so remote from the haunts of at least two, indicated that they were on the right track. And what had been mere suspicion was rapidly getting into the shape of fact.

Lannigan was a new hand in New York. That he had even come to the city had been unknown to Nick. He had never seen him nor come in contact with him, but he had heard of him as a most skillful thief whose line of work was principally that of opening safes, as some of the Philadelphians knew to their cost, for it was in that city he was suspected of making his headquarters.

Nick had heard that he had learned the trade of safe-lock making and had become an expert in opening safes where the combination had been lost. That the expertness he had reached in this had been his undoing, as he had been persuaded into doing this work for burglars who had opened the way for him to enter banks and other places where money was stored.

Nick had sent Chick into the saloon for the reason that he feared he would be recognized by Elwell, on whom he had called earlier in the day.