Shortly after eight o’clock that night Bugs Reilly again left the hotel. Burgess, of course, went after him. Again Bugs taxied to the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad station. This time he made for the ticket office and bought a ticket. He consulted the station clock, comparing it with his watch, and apparently decided there was ample time left in which to board his train, for he went to a newsstand and began looking over the magazines.
When Burgess was certain Bugs was taking no further interest in the ticket window he made his own appearance there and quickly elicited, by describing the purchaser, that Bugs had bought a ticket for the fashionable autumn and winter resort of Lakewood, New Jersey. He promptly supplied himself with a ticket to the same place. Bugs waited till within a few minutes of train time before presenting his check and recovering the kit of vault-cracking tools. Bugs traveled high, having a conductor assign him to a Pullman seat when he boarded the train.
Burgess, who couldn’t be sure that he may not have been pointed out as a detective to Bugs by some fellow crook at one time or another, dared not engage for himself the same luxury. He rode in the common smoker.
There were many stops, and, of course, at each he alighted from the train to see that Bugs didn’t steal a march on him in that way. Especially was he careful to do this, for it is an old trick of criminals to get off a train at a station before or a station beyond a town or city in which they mean to commit a crime. This is done for the purpose of beclouding possible identification by trainmen. Criminals traveling in pairs or trios or quartets frequently get off at different stations so that they will not be grouped in the mind’s eyes of conductors and brake-men.
But Bugs tried no tricks. At least, not on the journey to Lake wood. He rode the full length of the ride. And Burgess, elation still running high, loitered after him as he left the station. It was not policy to place himself too closely at the heels of his quarry, of course. He allowed Bugs a good two to three hundred feet of leeway ahead. But as Burgess came to a crossing ill-luck suddenly befell. Four huge lorries headed with milk for New York hove around a turn and halted Burgess while Bugs had escaped the delay.
When the lorries passed Bugs was gone!
This way and that Burgess looked, hurrying his steps, but man and bag had completely disappeared. Burgess ran from block to block peering down the side streets. No Bugs!
And yet, supposing that Bugs knew he was being followed, supposing Burgess had been identified as a detective to Bugs and that Bugs had caught sight of him at the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad station, or on the train, Bugs could not have done any tall running himself, burdened as he was with a bag full of heavy steel instruments and hampered as well by the caution the presence of nitro-glycerine in the kit made imperative. The implements themselves were all securely held in the bag by strap insets, but there was the danger of a trip and fall as he ran.
Burgess then became certain that if Bugs had gone ahead he must have caught up to him. Somewhere between the station and the place he now stood Bugs must have picked a place of concealment. It was possibly a prearranged place of hiding in some saloon near the station.
So the detective went back over the ground he had already covered. There were several saloons and lunch places in the vicinity of the depot, but these he looked into without result. Bugs had evaporated. Somewhere in the immediate neighborhood, Burgess then bethought him, the mob might have a local accomplice and that to his flat or house Bugs had gone awaiting the arrival of his masters, Liverpool Jack and Connecticut Blackie.
Somewhat was Burgess’s chagrin ameliorated by the thought of the last two criminals being securely under the espionage of his side-kick, Fitzpatrick, aided by Flaherty. After all, what was there to worry about? Bugs was only the underling, the toter of the tools. The expert, the actual performers, had to get on the job before anything could happen, any crime be committed. Fitzpatrick and Flaherty would be on the heels of the adepts, and this would lead them to the place where Bugs was to make rendezvous with them, the place to which he had so suddenly and blankly disappeared. His own job would be to pick up Fitzpatrick and Flaherty. He and Bugs had arrived on the next to the last train which would come to Lakewood that night. They had got in at eleven; there’d be another train at midnight.
But it was doubtful if Liverpool Jack and Blackie would use the railroad. Rather, they would come in a car, because they would reckon an automobile as their swiftest manner of escape after a robbery. His deduction as to a motor car was quite correct. But as for the rest! The rest was entirely another story.
Fitzpatrick had the satisfaction of trailing Liverpool Jack, making a beeline — as nearly as possible in a taxi — for Blackie’s hotel. Blackie was awaiting him in the lobby, cap and overcoat on, waiting to go. No time was lost in starting when Liverpool Jack arrived. Outside there sat a little ferret-faced fellow at the wheel of a big, eight-cylindered motor car, not too new nor conspicuous, but a machine of fine lines and in fine condition, as the detectives were soon to find out.
It was apparent the crooks did not think they were being spied on, for the car was parked directly in front of the hotel, and Liverpool Jack and Blackie did not so much as cast a glance over their shoulders to see if any one was noting their entrance to the machine.
To this day Detective John Fitzpatrick, and Detective Charles Flaherty and Ed Burgess, too, for that matter, would dearly like to learn the identity of that little, ferret-faced chauffeur!
He didn’t, on this night, at once show his stuff. The detectives in the high-powered car which Flaherty had planted on a side street near the hotel, had no trouble in keeping the other in sight.
But, it is to be remembered, in those days there was no automobile tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey. The detectives had, perforce, to run their car onto the same ferryboat which carried the crooks across the North River to the Jersey shore. The sleuths drove their car on last so that there were several vehicles between them and the crooks’ car which had been the first to slide over the gangplank and upon the ferryboat.
On leaving the ferry the crooks gave no evidence that the detectives had been recognized as fellow passengers aboard the ferry. They probably had not. For no effort was made by the car ahead that might be taken to mean an attempt to shake off pursuers. But some time between leaving the ferry and Jersey City and about five miles out of Newark — when truly rural sections were beginning to be traversed — discovery of pursuit was certainly made by Liverpool Jack’s conveyance.
It was then the little ferret-faced chauffeur began to “do his stuff.” An amazingly intimate knowledge of the New Jersey roads he soon displayed, not only of the highways, but of all the byways. He snaked in and out of remote dirt roads and through woodland roads no wider than lanes. He had the police chauffeur in the car following dazed and wall-eyed in an effort to figure his moves and keep the car in sight. Frequent halts had to be called while the detectives alighted and made out the freshest of the tire tracks ahead. And finally the little man at the wheel of the crooks’ car completely outwitted and outgeneraled the driver of the car.behind. What the crooks’ helmsman didn’t know of New Jersey roads could be fully jotted on a thumb nail. He lost the police car so far off the beaten roads that it took the detectives nearly an hour at that time of night to get the information that set them once more on the right highway for Lakewood.