“Pretty neat weapon, isn’t it, Gordon?” he asked, in a matter-of-fact tone, then stopped in feigned surprise. “Oh, you and the chief are having an argument? Hope you don’t think I’ve butted in. Now that I’m here, though, I think I might as well stay. You look as if you needed your wrists slapped, and the chief may not care to bother with it.”
The escaped convict had halted in his tracks at the first interruption, and was now looking from the detective to his assistant with baffled rage. He would have liked to fight it out to a finish, but his shrewdness told him that he would gain nothing by such a course, and it was one of his rules never to exert himself unnecessarily. The consequence was that he merely shrugged his shoulders.
“So be it,” he said quietly. “You fellows can trump my ace, I see. Let me remind you, however, that you haven’t got that gold that our mutual friend, John Simpson, took such a liking to. Likewise, you’re a long way from the possession of those papers which you were foolish enough to keep in a more or less ordinary safe.”
The detectives looked at each other and grinned.
“Think so?” queried Nick. “I’m afraid, in that case, that you are scheduled to receive another disagreeable surprise or two. I located the gold yesterday afternoon—in one of Gillespie’s closets. As for the missing records, I feel very sure that we shall discover them on you.”
And they did.
Therefore, there was no need of delay, and No. 39,470 Clinton was shipped northward to Dannemora the next day, under escort.
“Lucky for us that he belonged to the ‘Gray Brotherhood,’” Nick remarked to Griswold, when he turned a little over seventy-five thousand dollars in gold over to him. “Otherwise, he would have gone scot-free, just as in the case of Simpson. As it is, he’ll get something extra for his escape, at least, and I don’t believe he’ll have a chance to slip away again.
“But another case like this would give me heart disease, I’m afraid,” he added to himself.
THE END.