CHAPTER I

A CALL FOR HELP

With a vicious bang, which indicated that his thoughts were not on what he was doing, Nat Ridley hung the receiver on the telephone hook. He swung around in his swivel chair and looked out of the window of his Times Square office at the hurrying throngs converging at Broadway and Seventh Avenue.

"That's a new one, all right!" exclaimed the famous detective, more to himself than to anyone else, though Berry Todd, his capable assistant, was at a desk near by. "It sure is a new one! And to think that some of those human ants down there may have had a hand in it!"

He leaned forward the better to see out of the window.

"What's that?" asked Berry, who was shuffling over some papers. "Whose aunt are you talking about?"

"Nobody's aunt!" was Nat's reply. "I might just as well have said flies or bugs--that's what they look like!" He waved his hand to the hurrying throng--men and women mixed with automobiles.

"Oh--that bunch!" chuckled Berry. "Yes, there sure is a crowd. But is anything wrong?" he went on, for he realized that the mere sight of the crowd, almost always in evidence at this busy section of New York, was no new one for his chief. "Anything wrong?" asked Berry again, though in a lower voice, for he noted that the celebrated sleuth, whose exploits were the talk of two continents, was gazing abstractedly at the telephone.

"Yes, there is," snapped out Nat Ridley, though the crisp tone did not indicate impatience with his helper's insistence. "I can't quite make out why he should 'phone me."

"Who?" asked Berry, who was a privileged character.

"Carl Lemberg."

"That German sleuth?" cried Berry.

"He isn't as German as his name sounds," was Nat's reply. "Though of course he has many of the earmarks. But why he should want me to come in on one of his cases----"

"You don't mean to say he admits he's stuck, do you?" and Berry laughed. "That's pretty good! Lemberg up a blind alley--at the end of his trail--that's pretty good!"

The joke, if such it was, was all the more appreciated by Berry Todd, for of all the private detectives in New York, Nat Ridley's chief rival was this Carl Lemberg.

Yet Nat did not actually admit that Lemberg was a rival. It was only other detectives, some in the Ridley offices, who were thus bold about admitting the fact and, sometimes, complaining about it. For though the chief said nothing, more than once he had heard of some rather underhand practices on the part of Lemberg or the latter's helpers, practices that took from Nat Ridley cases that netted large sums of money.

But Nat Ridley was not one to complain, or even acknowledge that he had a rival. He took the cases that came to him, and not always for money, either. More than once he had worked day and night, and even endangered his life, solving a mystery for the very love of getting to the bottom of a tangle or for the sake of some friend.

Yet it could not be wholly ignored that Carl Lemberg was, in every sense of the word, a business rival of Nat Ridley's.

"So he's squealing, is he?" asked Berry. "What's the game? What sort of case has Lemberg that he can't solve, Chief?"

"He isn't exactly squealing, Berry," said Nat slowly, as he rose from his chair, pushed it back, and began nervously to pace the small private office. "He is in need of help."

"Then it's on a case, isn't it?" persisted Berry. "I'll bet a new straw hat, and the season's just opening, too," he added, "that he fell down on that Markwith jewelry robbery. They passed us up on that, Chief, and went to Lemberg. Now he's stuck! Serves him darn good and right!"

"No, it isn't the Markwith case, Berry," said Nat.

"What then?"

"It's a sort of family affair."

"Oh, a scandal? Well, we don't go in for that sort of thing, do we?"

"You haven't quite got me, Berry," and Nat smiled. "It isn't that kind of a case. Though it is a family matter for Lemberg. He's in need of help and he turns to me. Urgent need he said just now, over the telephone."

"Then it must be a big case!" declared Berry. "So much the better for us. I'd rather he'd be stuck on a big case and have to turn it over to us, than to have it a little jigger not worth bothering with. Want me to do anything, Chief?"

Nat Ridley slowly indicated a negative by a shake of his head.

"It hasn't gotten to that stage yet," he said. "In fact, I don't know what it is myself. I told him to come here and see me. Such matters aren't for the telephone."

"Then you're going to help him?"

This time Nat nodded in the affirmative.

"Whew!" whistled Berry Todd.

And there was reason for his surprise, for in addition to the rivalry existing between the two offices, there was a distinct feeling on Nat Ridley's part against Lemberg. The noted sleuth did not speak of this, but his friends and his office force knew of it.

Lemberg was too tricky, and Nat was out of sympathy with the manner in which the German, as he was often called, got some of his cases. And when Berry thought of that and heard his chief say he had agreed to listen to what Lemberg had to say, it is no wonder Berry whistled.

"Will he be here soon?" asked Berry, as he began to gather up the papers he was looking over. "If he will, I'd better light out. I was getting up the report for you on that kidnapping case, but----"

"Let it go, Berry," was the order. "Lemberg will be here in about five minutes, and he wants to see me alone. I'll let you and Baldy know what I decide to do."

"Lemberg will be here in five minutes?" exclaimed Berry as he put the papers in a portfolio and started for the door leading out of Nat's private room. "How's he coming--by air-ship?" The office of the other sleuth was down near Wall Street, several miles from Times Square.

"He is in our neighborhood," Nat went on. "He was so anxious to see me that he rode up here, and is down in the Grand Central Terminal now. He's coming up from there in a taxi."

"Well, I'll make myself scarce. But--you won't mind a word from an old friend as well as from one of your workers, Chief?" Berry seemed very anxious.

"Of course I won't!" declared Nat. "What is it?"

"Think twice before you have anything to do with Lemberg," was the low reply. "He's no better than a snake in the grass in my opinion."

"An opinion I quite agree with at times, Berry," was the rejoinder. "But I don't want to say I won't help him until I hear what he has to say. Judging from his voice, he was in quite a stew."

"Serves him right!" muttered Berry as he went out.

In a few minutes, during which Nat continued to pace the office, an electric buzzer near his desk signaled in a certain way.

"There he is!" murmured Nat, and, stepping to a button near the signal, he pressed it, indicating to Toodles, the office boy in the front office, that the chief would receive a visitor.

A moment later Carl Lemberg was ushered into Nat Ridley's private room.

In spite of the fact that he had lived all his life in the United States, there was a typical German appearance about this detective. He was massive in bulk and manner, and his voice, ordinarily, was loud and booming. It was this voice, more times than one, fairly hurled at a suspect, that had caused many to quail and confess.

Yet now Carl Lemberg was but a shadow of what he had been on occasions. Instead of entering the office with a firm and confident tread, he fairly slunk in, and he glanced from side to side, and once back of him, in a manner denoting that he feared he might have been followed.

His usually ruddy face was pale and his large hands trembled as he took a big linen handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face.

"It is good of you to let me come, Ridley," began the visitor, with no trace of accent, though he spoke German fluently and with a purity seldom attained by those not born in Germany.

"I could do nothing less after what you said," rejoined the other. "What is the matter?"

"Much!" was the reply, and again came that nervous look about and behind. "Are we alone here?" he whispered.

"As much so as anyone is ever alone," was the reply, with a smile. "The walls are sound proof--as yours are."

"Oh, yes--mine--of course! And yet they haven't seemed to keep my secrets."

"What do you mean?" asked Nat.

"I--I wish I knew!" was the faltering reply. "I wish I knew!"

"Look here, Lemberg," exclaimed Nat with a brusk show of friendliness he did not altogether feel, "you're all in! You're showing fear! It may not be real, but----"

"I am afraid, Ridley! I am afraid!" was the quick reply. "I hardly dare admit to myself how frightened I am. That is why I have come to you."

"You? Afraid?" chuckled Nat, half scoffing. "I can't believe it."

"It's true, I tell you!" fairly snarled the other. "I am in deadly fear!"

"What of, in the name of all the police of New York?"

"I don't even know that. But it's terrible!"

There was no mistaking the man's terror. It showed in his voice, in his eyes, in his actions. Nat Ridley was astonished. To himself he murmured:

"The intrepid Carl Lemberg afraid? Am I dreaming?"

Aloud he said:

"You must have a reason for this fear. I suppose you came to tell me--to get my help. And, if so----"

"Yes! Yes!" broke in the other detective. "You are ready to laugh at me, I know. I feel it! I would not be surprised. Yet, you would be afraid also if----"

He paused, startled by some noise unperceived by Nat.

"Well, what?" suggested the other. "I would be afraid if what?"

"If your brother had been murdered, and then your uncle and then your chief assistant. I ask you, Nat Ridley, if you would not, also, have fear under those circumstances? Would you----?"

At that instant the telephone on the desk jingled out an imperative summons, and, coming, as it did, at such a dramatic moment, even Nat Ridley was startled.