Black Star's Campaign/Chapter 24
CHAPTER XXIV
ON THE TRAIL
VERBECK tried to remember the exact words that Muggs had spoken. He had said plainly that the headquarters of the Black Star were not far from the river. That in itself was a help, but not a very great one.
There were thousands of places in the city, not far from the river, where the Black Star could hide and where the members of his band could visit him. The headquarters might be in a warehouse on the water front, in some pretentious mansion on the hills overlooking the stream.
And what else was it that Muggs had said? That he didn't want to die with music ringing in his ears! Verbeck wondered what that might mean, for it was the statement, evidently, that had caused such a quick end to the conversation.
Verbeck paced the floor and thought it out. He knew the city from one end to the other. He had been born there, reared there, had watched it grow. Music ringing in his ears
"The resort park!" Verbeck gasped. "That's what he must have meant! The Black Star's headquarters will be found near the river and near the resort park, where the band plays every afternoon and evening!"
Verbeck rushed to the telephone, called the sheriff, and asked him to come to his apartment immediately.
"I've got a tip that's better than the last one," he said. "Muggs gave it to me."
"Muggs?"
"Don't ask me to explain now. Hurry up here. And have the telephone people investigate that number I gave you, and report to you here about it."
Then Verbeck called the chief of police, finally locating him at his home.
"Chief, there's no use keeping up the bluff any longer," he said. "The Black Star knows very well that I am still after him. I wish you'd get over to my apartment as soon as you can. I've got something important to tell you. Kowen will be here"
"Why did you call Kowen?" the chief demanded. "Couldn't we handle it alone? I understand Kowen won enough glory to-night to last him a month."
"Come over, and do your quarreling here!" Verbeck said.
Kowen was the first to arrive, fifteen minutes later.
"What's the big tip?" he asked. "Anything to it?"
"Wait until the chief gets here."
"Did you send for the chief? Was that necessary, Verbeck? It seems to me that we worked pretty well together this evening. Why give the police some of the credit? I lost the Black Star, remember, and I ought to have a chance to get him back!"
"There'll be work enough for all of us—and glory enough," Verbeck assured him.
Then the chief came storming in and exchanged glares with the sheriff.
"Before we begin, it might be well to have an understanding," Verbeck said. "You gentlemen must stop scrapping and become allies. We have a big job on hand, and we want to wind it up as quickly as possible."
Then he told them of his conversation with the Black Star, and of what Muggs had said.
"Let them go?" Kowen screeched. "I'd let him wreck the town first! Those crooks are in jail, and they're going to stay there!"
"That isn't the point," Verbeck interrupted. "It's the little tip Muggs gave that interests us. According to what he said, the Black Star's headquarters are near the river, and I believe, when he spoke of the music, that he meant the resort park."
"I think you're right!" the chief exclaimed.
"But where could the headquarters be in that locality?" the sheriff wanted to know.
"It's our job to find out," the chief said, "and we'll start at daylight. If we can locate it before night, perhaps we can stop whatever it is that the big crook intends to do."
The telephone bell rang again. The call was for the sheriff, and he spent some time listening to the person at the other end of the wire. When he turned toward them again, his face was beaming.
"It begins to look good," he said. "That was from the manager of the telephone company. He looked up that number that Landers called. It is a little summer cottage far up the river beyond the resort park."
"Great!" the chief exclaimed. "We'll land 'em yet!"
"But that isn't the funny thing about it. The manager says he sent a man out there in a machine. There is nobody living in the cottage, and there hasn't been for months, yet the telephone bills have been paid regularly."
"Meaning," said Verbeck, "that the bills are paid by one of the Black Star's organization. Of course his headquarters are not in the cottage. But we'll find the place somewhere in that locality."
"Where do you get that?" Kowen asked.
"It means simply that somewhere between the cottage and the next station on the line, the Black Star has plugged in on the wire. When that number is called, the bell rings in his own headquarters. When he calls, it appears to the switchboard operator that the number is calling."
"I believe you've got it!" the chief cried.
"In the morning, you can go to that cottage and follow the wire, examine every foot of it, discover where the other wire is plugged in, follow it, and find the place that we want. Other men can search through the neighborhood. We're on the right track!"
For another hour they worked perfecting their plans, and then the chief and the sheriff, friendly again, took their departure. Verbeck left a call at the office for an early hour, and made haste to retire and fortify himself with sleep.
He was up soon after break of day, had his bath and breakfast, and went down to get his roadster from the garage, feeling particularly fit. He drove immediately to police headquarters and went into the private office of the chief, who with Sheriff Kowen was waiting for him.
"I had twenty men out there at daybreak working on that telephone line," the chief said. "They are scattered, of course—look like linemen. In fact, they are making a bluff at stringing a new line—but they are searching for the place where the Black Star taps the wire. It wouldn't surprise me much to find that the Black Star knows as much about our plans as we know ourselves—he seems to be able to get all the information he wants—but maybe we can get the better of the fiend this time!"
"Are we going to wait here for that wire squad to report?" Kowen asked.
"No; there is no use in that," the chief replied. "I have sent twenty more men out there—all in plain clothes. They went out a couple at a time; have been going out since midnight. Some are near the resort park and others are scattered through the woods. Did you send your deputies to the other side, sheriff?"
"I did; between us we have men on the north, east and south, and the river is on the west. Maybe we have that crook's headquarters surrounded, and maybe we haven't."
"We may as well start out there," Verbeck put in.
The chief got into the roadster with him; the sheriff had a car of his own, driven by a deputy. They drove rapidly through the city and out along the river road. They came to the resort, and got out and parked their cars. The sheriff and the chief began receiving reports from their forces.
All the buildings in the resort had been searched well, and nothing found. Men had discovered nothing suspicious in the woods. There was a large fish cannery near, and it had been investigated thoroughly. The men scattered around the woods were closing in, drawing the net tighter.
The wire squad was at work. They had followed the wire from the little cottage, after making an investigation there and being sure that the cottage was not the entrance to a subterranean abode used by the Black Star. Even while the man in charge of the squad was making his report, word was flashed down the line that the extra wire had been found.
The sheriff and chief got into Verbeck's machine, and he drove them a quarter of a mile down the road. The wire had been tapped in a very clever manner, as one of the electricians of the department explained. It was running underground, through a small cable.
The chief called for more of his men, and they began unearthing the line. It seemed to run straight toward the east, and through the woods. The chief sent a captain and half a dozen men ahead of the wire squad.
"We're getting close to them, I think," the chief declared. "I feel that this is going to be our lucky day."
After a time they found a telephone instrument attached to the wire and hidden beneath a heap of brush. Next they came upon the old farmhouse, with the wire fence around it. There the telephone wire left the ground and ran from tree to tree through the grove, to disappear into the building.
"There!" the chief said. "We'll get the place surrounded"
He gave quick orders, and the force of officers began closing in. Within a few minutes, the house had a circle of determined men around it. Verbeck and the chief had been watching it closely, while the sheriff placed the men. They had seen no sign of life.
"Probably gone—if this is really the place," Verbeck said. "It wouldn't have been difficult for the Black Star to learn our plans, and he had all night in which to get away."
"Well, we'll get in there, anyway," the chief said. "It may be our luck that he is still there with some of his gang. If he is gone, and had to get out in a hurry, he might have left something behind that will give us a clew as to what he intends doing to-night."
"And we could put a lot of trust in that, couldn't we?" said Roger Verbeck. "He won over us before, because we gave considerable attention to some bogus orders he left on a table in a bogus headquarters—don't forget that."
"I'm not liable to; the precious newspapers won't let me," said the chief.
The men were creeping through the brush now, approaching the fence. Verbeck had the chief issue an order for them to stop.
"I don't like the looks of that fence," he said. "You'll notice that the house is old and weather-beaten, and about to fall to pieces, from its appearance; but the fence is a substantial one, and new. I have an idea that the man who touches that fence will meet with serious trouble."
"By George, it is a new fence!" the chief admitted.
"Wait!" Verbeck said.
He crawled forward alone, foot by foot, stopping now and then to glance toward the old farmhouse, and made his way toward the fence that held the deadly current.