“Chick, you keep your eye on Lannigan, and I’ll see what Patsy has to say,” returned Nick.
He then turned to Patsy, asking what had excited him.
“Well,” said Patsy, “I hardly know where to begin, but I’ve been following Spike Thomas and Bally Morris all day. I’ve been thinking that Spike had put up a job with Lannigan to get the most money he could for those drawings, but Chick tells me that Lannigan has been robbed of them that he thinks Spike did it.”
“Well, Patsy,” said Nick, “tell me the whole story and we’ll see how it fits in with what we know.”
Patsy then recited to Nick all that had occurred between himself, Spike and Bally Morris, from the time they had met in Thirty-fourth Street up to the time they had been traced by him to Avenue A, their brief disappearance, the row he had had in the house in Avenue A, the surprising appearance of the two from a direction he least expected them, his tracing them to Spike’s home, with the subsequent interview which he had just had with Spike in the saloon in Bond Street.
Patsy told this rapidly, but clearly, and Nick was an attentive listener.
On his part, Nick related to Patsy all that had occurred from the time they had parted on the corner of Forty-second Street and Third Avenue, including, of course, the astonishing theft from Lannigan of the contents of the leather case, concluding with the statement that Chick and he had followed Lannigan in the belief that the cracksman was hunting for Spike Thomas and Bally Morris.
It did not take long for these two bright-minded people to fit in the two stories into a complete whole.
“It’s all straight as a whistle, chief,” said Patsy. “Lannigan threw Spike down. Spike, from what he had learned from me, made up his mind that he would rob Lannigan of that case. To get on a track of him and know what he was doing and when he was out of his room, was what he was laying on the corner of Forty-second Street and Third Avenue for. Just as soon as he saw Lannigan with your men, the two of them scampered off to Avenue A.”
Here Nick stopped Patsy to make sure by inquiry that there was no mistake as to the locality that both had tracked their people to on Avenue A. That being settled to the satisfaction of both as being the same, Patsy went on: