“Gee whiz! it won’t do to let him give me the slip at this stage of the game,” he muttered, at once increasing his pace. “I’m dead sure he has not seen me, so he cannot have ducked in there as a ruse, bent upon holding me up. If there is any holding up to be done, by gracious, I’m the gink who is going to do it.”
Patsy quickly confirmed his reasoning upon arriving at the point where Toulon had entered the woods. There was no sign of the rascal.
Hurrying on in the direction Toulon evidently had taken, however, Patsy soon came in sight of the sign on the top of Ardley’s building, and a moment later in sight of the building itself, just as Toulon turned one corner of it on his way to the door.
It was precisely at that time that Margate ended his mocking talk with Nick, and then commanded Ardley to throw the lever that opened that floodgate to the sluice.
The unexpected arrival of Toulon caused that murderous design to be temporarily deferred, though by no means discarded, and in the interval that ensued Patsy Garvan was not idle.
“By Jove, it was to this fellow that he telephoned,” he said to himself upon again reading the sign. “Ardley must be one of the gang, and Toulon has hiked back here to join them. The entire gang may be in the building, for all I know.
“There’s a launch made fast at the river bank, but it don’t belong here, or a float would be provided for it. I’ll make a bid, by gracious, to find out who is in there and what’s doing. I can reach one of those end windows without being seen from the house. Let come what may, by thunder, I’ll have one stealthy look.”
Patsy was not slow in acting upon this determination. He sized up with a glance the possibilities of approaching the building without being seen from within.
Leaving the fringe of shrubbery at the edge of the woods, under which he had briefly lingered, Patsy stole back of the huge pile of refuse mentioned, then crawled back of several barrels and boxes, finally reaching a point some twenty feet from an end window of the building[Pg 33] and near the corner around which Toulon had disappeared only a few moments before.
Patsy now could faintly hear the sound of voices from within the building.