Ch1

Crick-crack

Plunge

“what’s this?

“Grab him!”

“Stand back!”

Like pistol shots, sharp, rapid noises and words blended into a cyclonic sort of a jumble.

A ceiling had given way-that of rickety room in a rickety house in the suburbs of Chicago.

A form lurking among the rafters above had come down, amid a trail of broken laths and pelting
plaster-Bob Ferret, Nick Carter’s apt pupil and bright particular juvenile detective star.

Two men had started up from a table where, heads together in whispered converse , they had
bent over a small black sack.

Those two men, furtive, mysterious fellows, Bod Ferret had trailed from Chicago two hours previous,
had shadowed here, although they were on horseback,had crept up into that attic, and had waited.

The two men were also waiting for somebody, for something. Both had finally arrived.

The “somebody” wad a man enveloped in a long cloak, and face well concealed by heavy false
beard and pulled-down hat.

The “something” now rested on the table—a small black sack. There had been a low-toned
confab that Bod had not caught, but which, from sinister signs and expressive glances, he knew
appertained to the mysterious sack, or rather its contents.

It was the stating-point in a new case—an affair where, that afternoon, Nick Carter had told Bob
to follow a certain party.

Losing that party, Bob had done the next best thing in detective science---kept on the track of
the only persons who had spoken to the man, and who had spoken to the man, and who had led him to
this desolate, out –of-the-way place.

Bod felt that he had made no mistake in doing this, for the man who had brought theparcel in
black sack, he was certain, was, disguised, the man he lost track of a few hours previous.

It was in trying to get out of the attic and after this individual once more,in peering thorugh a
break in the ceiling and trying to guess what was in the sack, that bob had slipped between the two
raffers.