Читать книгу A Battle for Right; Or, A Clash of Wits - Carter Nicholas - Страница 8

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While Joe Stokes sat in his room and studied, two other persons were in conference in the room immediately below his own.

They also wanted to find H.M., although their main purpose in coming to this small lumber village and summer resort was to look for a man wanted for a series of crimes in and about New York City. His name was said to be Andrew Lampton, although, considering the number of aliases he used, there was a strong possibility that it was not his real name.

“Harold Milmarsh is here, Chick,” said one of the two persons, after making sure the door of the double-bedded room was locked. “I did not see him to-night about the hotel. But the landlord says he is probably over at the garden looking at the show.”

“Shall I go over and get him?”

Nick Carter—for it was the celebrated detective who was sitting in the room with his principal assistant—smiled at the impetuosity of Chick.

“Not till I tell you, Chick. We must go cautiously about this thing, or we may lose our man.”

“I don’t see why. We are only taking him back to be a multimillionaire. He doesn’t know his father’s dead, I guess, or he’d have been back before without anybody coming after him.”

“What is the name of this village—or town, or whatever it is?” asked Nick, abruptly changing the subject.

“Maple. There are forty or fifty places named ‘Maple’ in Canada. You can safely bet on running into one every few hundred miles. It’s like ‘Newark’ in the United States. Did you ever think how many Newarks there are about the country?”

“Never mind about that, Chick,” was the rather impatient rejoinder. “This place is called Maple. That is enough for me. My information was that Lampton told somebody in Chicago that he might go to Maple. It seems he heard that some girl he wanted was coming here. She is a singer, and her father plays the violin.”

“Didn’t you get their names?”

Nick glanced at his assistant with a tired smile.

“Their name is Silvius. The father is Roscoe Silvius, and his daughter is known as Bessie. I suppose her full name is Elizabeth. But ‘Bessie’ will do for our purpose. We’ll go down to the restaurant and see if they will give us a cup of coffee and a sandwich. Then we can stroll over to the garden, where the vaudeville show is. That was a long, tiresome ride on the stage, and I dare say you are as hungry as I am.”

“I don’t know just how hungry you are,” returned Chick. “But I know I am about starved. I could eat the china handle off a door.”

The two detectives had, in fact, been in the Savoy Hotel only half an hour. They had arrived on the stage from the terminus of the little railroad that ran out of Edmonton, in Alberta, in company with a party of three tourists, and had passed as such themselves. There was nothing distinctive about their appearance to tell the world what their profession was.

They had come direct to the room to which they had been assigned, and, having had a wash and brush up, were ready for the meal that was always furnished for the stage passengers in the evening.

Nick Carter opened the door to go downstairs, but quickly stepped back. He left the door open wide enough to enable him to peer through the crack, and held up his hand to Chick to keep silent.

For about two minutes Carter stood still looking out. The room behind him was dark, and so was the hall. But there was light in the hallways below, and it chanced to shine feebly on the face of a man who was fumbling at a door lock about a dozen yards from where the detective watched.

“It’s our man, Chick,” whispered the chief. “He’s getting into that room with a picklock. We are sure of him now, and I guess we’ll see what he’s after in that room. We can take him back to New York to answer to that counterfeiting charge, and the other things against him. But I should like to know what game he has here.”

“It was lucky that both Milmarsh and Lampton came to this place. We can kill two birds with one stone. It isn’t often things break as well as that.”

“They didn’t ‘break’ particularly,” whispered back Nick. “I knew Lampton would be likely to be here, and I had definite information before we left New York that Howard Milmarsh was working as a lumberman near Maple, in Alberta. It is all perfectly simple.”

“It is a wonder you didn’t trust somebody else to gather these men in,” remarked Chick. “You might have saved all this time for yourself if you’d just let me come. I could have handled the case, I know.”

Nick Carter did not answer this grumbling tirade. He did not seem even to hear it. Now he darted out of the doorway into the dark hall, with Chick close behind him, and tried the door, the lock of which Lampton had been working on with his bit of strong wire.

“We’ll have to break it open, Chick. Too bad! I was waiting for him to get the door open. Then I intended to nail him before he could shut it again. He was too quick for me. Lampton always was a slick individual. He slipped through and banged it shut all in an instant. It has a spring lock, you see, like our own—only with a different kind of key, of course.”

The detective was annoyed that he had allowed this rascal to keep him back, even for an instant. He pushed with all his strength at the door, resolved to break it in at all hazards. He could easily explain to the landlord who he was afterward, and a dollar or two would repair the damage.

“Mighty strong door!” exclaimed Chick, as he hurled himself against it by the side of his chief. “It ain’t going to give way in a hurry. But we’ll have to smash it open if it takes all——”

He broke off suddenly, for inside the room there arose the sound of two men engaged in a fierce struggle.

They could hear furniture falling over, and the scuffling of feet, mingled with pantings, as if the contestants were in fierce grips, and putting forth all their strength.

“Listen,” said Chick. “That sounds like Lampton’s voice. I haven’t heard it for three years, but I’d swear it’s he that’s growling to the other fellow to stand back.”

“Push the door!” returned Nick. “Never mind about talking. We can do that afterward. I want to get into this room.”

For a minute or two longer the racket continued. Then they heard the sound of a window sash being wished up violently, followed by more banging and scuffling.

“Ah!” cried somebody inside.

“That’s Milmarsh!” exclaimed Carter involuntarily. “It means that the other fellow has got away. Down with this door!”

The detective had considered, for a moment, the wisdom of rushing down the stairs and out to the lawn, to pursue the person who had just jumped through the window. But he decided that it would be hard to find anybody in the darkness who had had so long a start, and he redoubled his efforts to get the door open.

“Shove, Chick!”

“I am shoving!”

“Harder!”

“Gosh! I’m doing all I can!” protested Chick.

The two moved back a few inches from the door, and flung themselves back against it with all their weight.

This time it yielded. With a smash, it fell into the room. Unfortunately, the two detectives went with it, and it took them a little time to get up and find out just where they were.

Just as they fell into the room they heard a loud noise at the window, and then the sash, which had been held up by one of the primitive catches often employed in country places, broke loose and came down with a slam, locking itself as it did so.

Nick Carter, notwithstanding that he was in such a mix-up, realized what had happened at the window. A man had just slipped through and dropped to the lawn after the first one, and, in doing so, he had disengaged the sash from the contrivance which held it up.

What worried the detective more than anything else was that he realized he had lost both the men he was after—the crook, as well as the heir to the Milmarsh millions and the big steel-manufacturing plant.

The catch of the window which held the sash down was out of order. That is a common complaint with window locks of all kinds. It had become jammed so that it was impossible to open it in the ordinary way.

Nick took from his pocket the jackknife he always carried—an implement which had a number of useful little tools in the handle. With this he pried the window open and looked out.

“See anything?” asked Chick.

“No. I did not expect to do so, either. But we won’t give up the chase just yet. They can’t get out of Maple easily. We’ll have them both before morning.”

“This is Howard Milmarsh’s room, isn’t it, do you think?” asked Chick.

“No doubt about that,” was the chief’s quiet reply, as he lighted the lamp he had found on a side table—luckily not upset in the struggle which had taken place. “By Jove! That fellow was going through Howard’s trunk. Look! See how everything is tumbled over!”

“And a lot of letters scattered about. What are they?”

Nick glanced through three of the letters hurriedly, one after another.

“From lumbermen and miners, addressed to different places. Howard has traveled about considerably in the past two years, poor fellow! The significance of these letters is not in the letters themselves, for they are not important. But the way they are tossed about shows that Andrew Lampton knew there were some papers in this trunk worth taking—or he believed there were. I don’t like Lampton being mixed up in Milmarsh’s affairs at all—that is, unless we capture the blackguard. Then it won’t matter.”

“Well, we will capture him,” declared Chick, with sublime confidence in the infallibility of his chief. “We’ll have them both long before we are ready to go to bed.”

But he was mistaken. They searched every part of the grounds of the Savoy Hotel, and hunted all over Maple. But not a vestige could they find either of Andrew Lampton or Howard Milmarsh! They had got clean away!

In the end, the chief and Chick had to leave Maple without their men.

It was a mystery, but Nick only smiled when his assistant said that to him.

Solving mysteries of this kind—and even much harder ones—was the life amusement of Nick Carter.