Beadle's Half Dime Library, No. 470 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

8 we ee ee ee es ee A I ruinous to a certain scheme while you remain at large.” ‘* You mean the mystery of Mark Morey!” cried Felix. ‘I have found a clew to the mis- sing Nabob and you know it. The man is not dead. He is detained for a certain purpose in a certain place in this city. Larry Lolan, you are in the employ of the man who is to be bene- fited most by the infamous plot that has been formed against the Broad street Nabob.” ‘*“ What is that man to you?’ hissed the crook, ‘* Personally nothing,” said Felix, ‘‘I have never spoken to Mark Morey in my life.” ** But you have seen the girl?—Estelle sent for ou 977 ** Yes, she invited me to her home. I went, of course. She put the mysterious case into my hands, and I promised her to find the Nabob,” “Do you think you will?” grinned Larry, leaning torward suddenly, eT Wu ! The man laughed outright. ‘TT am going to have a say in that!” he ex- claimed, ‘*I don’t think you'll interfere in the hand I am playing. It is a bigger game than the O’Hagan diamond play was. Have you dis- covered that the Nabob is not Estelle’s father?” **T never thought of that, but she loves him, all the same.” ‘* Loves him dearly, I should say,” continued Larry. ‘‘ She has a lover who is in Europe just now—" **And a man of whom she thinks more than she does of Rogers Marxe, the Nabob’s partner,” said the boy plotter, ‘And yet this man Marxe expects to make her his wife.” ‘* Which he will do!” the crook said, shutting his lips hard behind the declaration. ‘‘ You haven’t broken the shell of this big game, Felix. It is the shrewdest one ever gotten up in Goth- am there’s millions init, But, never mind, I am going to leave you here. I am not afraid to do this. for I know that Larry Lolan is to be tracked no more by the young Fox of the Bow- ery.” The man stepped back with his eyes fastened on Felix, and the boy detective saw, deep in their merciless depths, the gleam of a tiger’s triumph, ‘“‘This isn’t a big room, but it does the wurk always,” Larry went on, glancing around the apartment. ‘‘ The loudest cry gets no further than the walls. A gun might be fired here and nobody outside would hearit. Good-by, Felix.” The speaker had locked the door; his left hand was behind him. All at once he touched an unseen spring, ana the door opened. The next moment the young spotter was alone. , For several minutes Felix stood where Larry had left him, then he went to the iron-barred window and looked out. At first all was dark to him, but he presently saw the thousand and one street lamps below him; he was far above the pavement, All at once the floor seemed to give way be- neath his feet! Felix clutched the bars of the window and clung there tenaciously. ‘‘Tarry, the thug, was right!” hoe thougnt. “‘T am in a death-trap.” Then he put his feet down; they touched noth- inv, Fe looked downward, but all was dark. The floor had disappeared! CHAPTER IX. FELIX IN LUCK. Freiix thought rapidly in that awful moment. ‘ff [let go I am doomed. I shall drop into a pit, and never see a trail again, I will hang here while life lasts.” Thus the boy spotter spoke while he clung to the iron bars of the window, his whole weight on the irons, which threatened to cut his fingers to the bone. The room about him was now dark, the gas which Larry Lolan had lighted seemed to have been extinguished when the floor dropped; an atmosphere with an unpleasant odor came up from below. Summoning all his strength, Felix drew his body up and climbed to the window-sill, where by grasping the top bars he rested tolerably well, and there he clung and caught his breath. For ten minutes affairs remained in this con- dition, and then « peculiar noise told Felix that the floor was coming back to its place. At last it seemed to be permanently fixed. Felix could not remain on the narrow sill. His position kept him in constant pain. He feared to trust the floor, which worked by some unseen machinery and was a trap, still he could not stay where he was. “Tf Larry thinks me at the bottom of his pit, A Pre. . The Boy Shadow. a ee ee - _ —_ — 8 ee ees = +e ———_ -_-__—_-----_--— ee tee a Ce I can go down,” he said; ‘‘ but if he discovers | dow, expecting to see the first gleams of day that [ am not there, he may spring the trap | peeping through the iron bars. again.” Felix left the window-sill and lowered himself cautiously to the floor. He pressed the boards firmly, yet with caution, but found them appar- ently solid. When he left the window he drew off his shoes and Bron his way to the couch. It was still a terrible moment for the boy spotter, for he’ could not tell when the floor might open again. ‘*T must get out of here,” was his constant thought and frequent exclamation. ‘‘ This un- certainty is as bad as death itself.” But the question always recurring was how was ho to effect his escape? Nerved to the utmost, Felix began to search for the door by which Larry had left the room, It did not take him long to tind it, but, when fcund, it was locked. After awhile the boy detective struck a match and began to search the room, with the light shaded by his hands, scemed to have taken possession of the house; his stockinged feet made no noise as he elided over the floor, “This floor was put in motion by a spring somewhere in the house,” said Felix. ‘* It is Larry’s work, and as I am still alive, I sup- pose he considers me dead at the bottom of the pit.” This was exactly the case. Té he could have followed Larry Lolan when ho left the room, he would have seen him de- scend the stairs to a small apartment that was pretty well furnished, *“Tve got the rat where I’ve long wanted him,” ejaculated Rogers Marxe’s tool. ‘I always suspicioned that he was one of those who trailed me for the O’Hazan diamond work, I know it now. By his own confession he had me run down when I saved and plucked that girl at the ferry. He struck a trail to-night at the office that would soon end our game if we let him follow it up. But the rat dies for his smeilin’ qualities. The sharpest boy in New York will now take a downward plunge.” Larry spoke the last words through clinched teeth, and walked across the room, He ran his hand up the wall until it touched an object about as large as a door-knob, The next moment he disclosed a lid by touching a spring, and his fingers found the end of a cord in the wooden box, ‘* Now, good-by, Felix fox!” continued Larr jerking the cord which had a knob at the end, ‘**'You have reached the end of the Nabob’s trail.” For several moments afterward Larry stood motionless with one ear pressed againt the wall. He seemed to be listening for certain sounds be- yond the room he occupied. All this time he held the cord he had jerked. ‘*T guess that did the business,” he said at last, and then he pulled on the cord steadily for a moment and heard a noise that seemed to satisfy him. Before Larry left the room, he opened a con- cealed sideboard in the wall and took a drink from a bottle which he found on its shelf. *T’ll go to Jacob’s and find Harris,” he said, and the minute he bad locked the house behind him he was hurrying awey. We now know why Felix Fox was not molested after the replacement of the floor of his roum., Larry Lolan, tho city crock, did not dream that his trap had failed. If he thought of the boy spotter while he walked from the house, it was as a dead body in darkness, and where the sharpest detectives of Gotham would never find him. As for Felix, he grew bolder as the moments waned and the floor remained immovable. He found the gas-burner that protruded from the wall, and ventured to light it. This showed him the whole interior of the man-trap, the door, the place where the floor divided, every- thing. While the door resisted all his efforts to open it, Felix could discover no keyhole, which con- Vinced him that it opened when a secret spring was touched. He had noticed that it had opened for Larry when his back was turned toward it; this indicated the ial ys of a spring. The boy spotter had had a good deal of experi- ence with secret springs and mysterious doors, It stooc him well in need at the present time, After an hour’s work he seemed ready to give the whole thing up. The cunning of Larry the thug had baffled him. It was getting on toward daylight by this time and the boy was anxious to escape, if escape was in the question, while it was yet dark. a _—_— a ‘* Larry may have touched the spring with the heel of his boot,” said Felix, and the boy went to the couch and put on his shoes, Going back to the door he recommenced the search. ‘ a inch of space he pressed firmly with his eel. ‘*They have baffled me!” exclaimed the boy, ‘*T have escaped the horrors of your pit, Larr Lolan, to meet a worse fate. You may notvisit this place for days. Sbhrewd Simpson may cage you and you ‘vould not tell him that I was your last victim, I hate myself for not taking you for the O'Hagan crime when I had you. 1 let your act at the ferry save you. And you rob- | bed the girl afterward! I ought to die here for my leniency then.” Felix brought his heel down with mad empha- sis on the floor and started toward the cot. The next second there was a strange noise be- The stillness of death | hind him; he turned with a singular cry. The door was open! If a bomb had fallen at the boy spotter’s feet, he would not have been more completely sur» prised. What search had failed to reveal, accident had accomplished, His heel striking the floor in wrath had found the concealed spring which had opened the prison door! Felix was not the person to hesitate at a mo-~ ment like this. He went down the steps to the room below, found the door that led from it, and descended to the first floor. He was anxious to inspect the pit where Lar- ry supposed him to be at that time, but he dared not stay in the house. The front door was found to be locked; there was no spring to open it. Felix was not to be defeated by a bolt and a key; he went to a win- dow near by, raised the sash, and dropped al- most noiselessly upon the sidewalk unseen by any one, ‘“ This feels like liberty,” muttered the boy. ‘‘The cage is empty, Mr. Lolan, and the fox is oing to prove the most dangerous tenant it ever ad. Youare one of those fellows who have great confidence in your inventions; you may not go back to your trap for days, I will not be surpris d if you never go back to it.” he boy did not quit the place until he had fixed it in his mind beyond all possibility of miss- ing it should he want to find it in the future. hen he moved off it was witha gleam of victory in his eyes. Ve pulled his hat over his forehead and hurried along the streets in the dark hour that ushers in the dawn. Nobody seemed to recognize him, and he was not long finding his little room on the Bowery in which, as the reader recollects, Harris Hodge told him the story intended to decoy him into the clutches of Moses, the Baxter street Jew. Felix was tired when he entered the humble uarters which he occupied when not at work. Nothing had been disturbed; the littleroom had had no visitors during his absence. Feeling the need of rest for the next exciting play which he knew was before him the bo spotter threw himself upon a couch and fell asleep. While he slept the new morning dawned and the Bowery took a new lease of life. Felix’s sleep was too deep to be disturbed by the rumble of the elevated cars that ran past his window. The sun wa3 trying to brighten New York when he opened his eyes. Seeing the light stream- ing in at his window, he sprung out of bed but immediately started back for a man was asleep in a chair not ten feet away, ‘“By Jupiter! it is Shrewd Simpson!” ex- claimed Felix, and the next moment his hand descended upon the sleeper’s shoulder starting him at once into wakefulness. ‘ ‘‘ Here! what do you know” cried Felix. ‘TI have beaten you, for I have found a trail which leads to the Nabob. Where bave you been?” ‘‘ Some place where you never was,” Was the reply. ‘“* I have been clawed by a tigress, choked into insensibility and thrown into a well for dead, And all because I had struck the trail of the missing gold-bug.” Felix uttered a loud exclamation. ‘Then w: ll work together, Shrewd Simpson,” he said. ‘* Let us first compare notes,” ‘‘Go ahead,” suid the independent detective. ‘+ Tell me all you know first.” CHAPTER &X. SHREWD SIMPSON’S STORY. No boy ever had a better listener than had Felix Fox in the person of Shrewd Simpsoa, the Every now and then he looked up at the win- : hotspur detective, Cc es ; | _ 7" * —— s , « | ry aa