One who had had less experience in such matters, or had studied the ways of criminals under an inferior master, would almost certainly have chafed under the delay and given way to apprehensions lest the two scoundrels might yet slip through his fingers. But Jack Wise knew when to look for trouble and when to be sure that the wind was in the right quarter.
Forebodings would have been foolish under the circumstances. Grantley and Siebold had made themselves at home on the canal boat, which would require days to reach Albany. The very fact that they had done so proved that nothing had aroused their fears during their zigzag course through the city, and now it was to their interest to do nothing that would whet the curiosity of those with whom they had temporarily thrown their lot.
Therefore, there was no reason to suppose that they would not sit tight so long as nothing disturbed them, and Nick and his assistants could be counted on to see that nothing did—until it was too late for their quarry to escape.
Meanwhile, several of the barges had been lashed together and had started up the river. They were heavily laden, however, and the tug’s pace was almost a crawl.
From the vantage point of a neighboring dock, Jack watched them philosophically.
“By-by, my friends! See you later!”
The words formed themselves in his mind, but instantly the look of anticipated triumph disappeared from his face and one of horror replaced it. He was thinking of the well-nigh unbelievable outrage which had been perpetrated on the trusting financier.
“‘The chair’ is altogether too quick and clean a death for those fiends,” he told himself, “and yet they won’t get even that. They haven’t killed his body, but have only murdered the part of him that’s worth most to him—his mind! Yet all they’ll get, I suppose, is the maximum sentence for performing an irregular operation under the new law. They’ll get that, though, I can tell them! I can never be grateful enough for the chance, or the fate, that threw them in my way just then. I suppose the chief would have nabbed them, sooner or later, but it would have meant a lot of mighty stiff pulling against the current.”
Jack thereupon lounged slowly toward Fourteenth Street and hung about the corner he had named for half an hour or more. At the end of that time Nick put in an appearance in one of his motor cars, and, being familiar with his assistant’s disguise, he picked him out at once.
“What’s this Joseph tells me, Jack?” he demanded eagerly, as he jumped out of the machine. “Do you really know where Grantley and Siebold are?”