CHAPTER XX.
THE BLACKMAILER’S SUPREME HAUL.
For a moment that seemed an eternity, Ernest Gordon crouched as if petrified, his eyes turned wildly to the door.
Had he locked it?
Of course he had, but he could not be sure of it at that moment, and, even if it were locked, what beastly mischance had brought an interruption just then?
Supposing it were Carter himself, or one of his assistants?
The rascal’s clammy hands were cold, and his knees threatened to collapse under him.
Gritting his teeth, however, and with a look of contempt for his own weakness, he pushed the inner door back, swung the other one around until it was only slightly ajar, and, after a hasty glance about to make sure that all else was in order, strode to the door.
“What is it?” he called harshly.
Even at the moment of utterance he was conscious that the voice bore little resemblance to that of the man he was impersonating.
The reply, to his relief, was in the butler’s deferential tones.
“Telegram, sir,” Joseph announced. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I thought you probably would like to have it at once.”
“That’s all right,” Gordon said, taking care this time to imitate Nick’s voice accurately.
He unlocked the door and opened it a foot or so.
“Thanks, Joseph,” he said, taking the telegram from the butler’s silver salver, and closing the door again, but not locking it.
He knew that the hand he had extended was grimy, and that a locked door was probably a very unusual phenomenon, but he did not make the mistake of offering any explanation. That would have been more suspicious still.
“If he noticed my hand, he’ll think I’ve been working in the laboratory,” he assured himself. “As for the door, that’s none of his business. A man doesn’t have to do the same things in the same way year after year.”
He hastily tore open the yellow envelope, and found within Jack Cray’s message from New Pelham, asking him to come on the seven-thirty train.
Gordon positively chuckled as he finished reading the telegram.
“He’s hit upon something big already, or thinks he has, at any rate,” he decided. “Let’s hope his impression isn’t an erroneous one, and that my dear Carter’s friend Jack is going to lead me to a carload of gold pieces. I’ll be there, Cray, you may be sure.”
Now that Joseph had gone away, Green Eye quietly relocked the door, and, thrusting the telegram into his pocket, hurried back to the safe.
He swung the ponderous outer door to the right, and clamping his fingers over the right-hand edge of the knobless door within, he drew it to the left.
He had been careful not to push it completely shut before going to the door, for he feared that he might not be able to open it again.
Now open to his eyes lay the interior of the safe.
Eagerly he snatched open one of the drawers, and gave a little grunt of satisfaction when he found a couple of reasonably thick bundles of paper money. When the bundles were withdrawn, he caught a glimpse of several familiar-looking little packages, round, slender, and wrapped in manila paper.
“Gold, just as it came from the bank!” he muttered, snatching up one of the packages and tearing off the end of the wrapping.
A stack of ten-dollar gold pieces was revealed.
“This will do very nicely for current expenses,” Green Eye murmured, with a smile. “Now for the rest, though.”
He carried the money over to the table, and thrust notes and gold into the pockets of the coat he had taken off before he set to work, after which he returned to the safe and began his search for Nick’s precious secrets.
Packet after packet he drew out, chuckling at the inscriptions on some of them, then grimy with his work, and, still in his shirt sleeves, he set out to examine the records, his chair drawn up to the table, his fingers shaking with the excitement that possessed him. Once he stopped, and mechanically lighted a cigar, but it was soon forgotten, and went out, after which the end of it was chewed to a pulp.
The papers he unearthed were all he hoped they would be.
There, before him, were the histories of scores of the most important cases that Nick Carter had handled. Many of them, to be sure, were of such a nature that they afforded no opportunities for blackmail, but there were quite a number which, even to a casual glance, revealed alluring possibilities in that direction.
Gordon’s pale eyes glittered with greed as he read names and dates, and all the precise array of facts which had been accumulated by the painstaking labors of the great detective and his staff.
“It’s a gold mine, nothing else!” the master rascal told himself, his hands trembling with eagerness. “If I have time to work it as it ought to be worked, I can pull down a quarter of a million—half a million!”
His enthusiasm carried him away into the region of fairy possibilities, where a rosy light played over everything. He did not realize how important was that little word “if” which he had passed over so lightly.
This was just the sort of thing that appealed to him most, this bleeding of those who could much better afford to pay large sums in hush money than to have gossip busy with their names.
He made a selection of the records that appealed to him most at first glance, then bundled the others up carefully and thrust them back into the safe.
“This will be all I will need,” he told himself; “for the present, at least.”
Therefore, he risked closing the inner door of the safe, but, lest there should be any uncertainty about it, he made sure that he could open it later. After that he closed the outer door, but, of course, did not lock it, for he had put the locking mechanism out of commission.
Thanks to his care in covering up his traces, however, it was not likely that any ordinary eyes would detect the fact that the safe had been violated, and, to further minimize the possibility, he placed a chair with its back against the safe door.
Leaving the bundle of documents in plain sight of the desk, he rang for Joseph.
“I shall want dinner by six-thirty to-night, Joseph,” he said.
“Very good, sir,” the butler replied. “Any special orders?”
“No, no—the usual thing.”
After the butler had departed, Green Eye hastily bathed and changed his clothing, after which he seated himself at the desk, and began going through the papers in a more careful way, stopping to consider their possibilities now and then, or to jot down a note.
Dinner was announced long before he expected it, and, after keeping it waiting for ten minutes or more, he rose, stretched himself, and, with a little hesitation, thrust all of the papers into his pockets, to which he had already transferred the stolen money.
“For all I know, I may never return here,” he told himself. “It isn’t likely that Cray has located Simpson’s treasure chest, but if he has, the situation will call for immediate action on my part—and the worthy Cray and I will hardly be friends afterward, if he survives. He’ll know I’m not Carter if I stick him up for the eighty thou, and that means that I’ll have to make myself scarce, and be quick about it.”