“Kate Crandall knows, but will not speak. Shadow her constantly until otherwise directed. Be governed by circumstances. I’m off for home. Phone me there of any discoveries.” CHAPTER V. PATSY TURNS CROOK. Patsy Garvan needed no instructions beyond those contained in Nick Carter’s note, nor additional information as to the position Kate Crandall had taken. It was plain enough to Patsy, and he shaped his course accordingly. Knowing that the woman might incidentally have seen him from her window, and that she would recall him suspiciously if they met later, Patsy entered the corridor of a near building and put on a disguise with which he was provided. It by no means improved him, however, for it gave him a decidedly tough and hangdog appearance. “It’s good enough for the work to be done,” he tersely soliloquized, not anticipating how effectively it was to serve him. Returning to the street, Patsy found a concealment from which he could stealthily watch the door of the bank building, prepared to await the departure of Kate Crandall or size up any visitor she might receive. His vigil was not rewarded until five o’clock, when Kate came out and walked quickly up the street. “Gee! she’s a peach, all right,” thought Patsy sententiously, who until then had had merely a glimpse at her through her office window. “She evidently has quit work for the day and is heading for home.” Patsy, was right. He also inferred from the woman’s darkly handsome face that she was not in an enviable frame of mind. He stealthily followed her out of the business district and to an attractive outskirt of the town. There, just as she was turning a corner, a well-dressed man stepped from a near yard and spoke to her. Patsy saw her draw back, as if confronted by a stranger, and then he saw the man’s face, and recognized him. “Holy smoke!” he muttered, slinking back of a tree. “This does settle it. That’s Turk Magill, gangster and all-around bad egg, as sure as I’m a foot high. She just about employed him to get the gospel dispenser and--no, by Jove, she don’t appear to know him. I must be wrong.” Cautiously watching them, Patsy presently decided that he was right, and that Kate Crandall was not acquainted with Turk Magill. She remained talking with him, nevertheless, frowning darkly while likening to his earnest utterances, yet occasionally glancing apprehensively toward a house around the corner. “Gee! he’s got something on her,” thought Patsy, after a few moments. “That’s dead open and shut, or she wouldn’t listen to him. She’s doing so under protest; that’s a cinch.” Magill was a well-built, florid man, a thousand times more prepossessing externally than within, and Patsy quickly saw that the rascal’s arguments, persuasion, or of whatever his talk consisted, would not immediately prove effective.