“You have been looting his business of all that it would stand without immediate detection,” said Chick. “You have been loaning small amounts on gems and jewels and the like, and then pawning the collateral elsewhere for a much larger sum, and whacking up the difference. When a customer shows up to redeem a pledge, if it happens to be one that you have put elsewhere, you stave him off until you can raise the dust to redeem it yourselves, in case you don’t have it on hand, that you may turn it over to the proper owner and thus avert exposure. But it’s bound to come, Garland; it’s bound to come. In fact, it already is here.” “That’s what Nick Carter suspects, is it?” Garland spoke with a sneer, but his voice had a quaking uncertainty that told of utter dismay, of a realization that he had played a losing game and must pay the price. “Sure that’s what he suspects,” Chick replied complacently. “You’re a bunch of star looters, that’s what you are. When the books and vaults of the Imperial Loan Company are examined, you’ll be found to be a hundred thousand short, at least.” “Confound you Carters, anyway!” Garland cried, with a snarl. “You know too much.” “Too much for most crooks whom we get after,” Chick dryly admitted. “It may cost you something one of these days.” “It already has cost you something,” Chick retorted. “Nick tumbled to it almost off the reel. You were in pressing peril when the woman unexpectedly showed up to redeem her ten-thousand-dollar pledge. You have shoved up the jewels somewhere else, and probably for fifteen or twenty thousand. You did not have the jewels when she called yesterday, nor the money with which to redeem them this morning. Nick suspected it, Garland, and we got right at you to drive you to the wall. We have done it, all right.” Chick heard a growl from the cabman, one Buck Morgan, who had driven the taxicab the previous afternoon, and Chick also heard the remark that followed it. “The cursed dick is right, Morris. We’d better make a quick get-away.” “Not on your life,” snarled Garland. “I’ll get him first, or--hark! What was that?” There was little need to ask, nor had Morgan any time in which to answer the question. The hurried tread of several men sounded in the lower hall and then on the near stairway. They came rushing up at top speed, Patsy Garvan in the lead. “It’s all off, Mr. Garland; all off!” he shouted, while he came, at the same time brandishing a ready revolver. “Don’t attempt any funny business, or there’ll be a dead pawnbroker here. Shut up, you two women, or we’ll put you in irons with these two gazabos.” The raid, quietly made, indeed, as Nick had directed, was already a success. Both Garland and Morgan collapsed the moment they saw Patsy and the other detectives. They were capable of thieving and abduction, but not of murder and bloodshed.