CHAPTER VI.
A CLEW BY WATER.
It was not long before the treatment had its effect on the injured valet. The chafing and massage, aided by the brandy, restored him much quicker than might have been expected.
He was looking about him wildly when Nick decided that his complete recovery would be accelerated if he were carried into the house.
“Give me a lift, Chick!”
The two raised the man from the floor, and laid him over one of the brawny shoulders of Nick Carter.
The valet was heavy and large, but the detective carried him along without apparent effort into the house, up the stairs, and into one of the bedrooms.
“If you can find something warm for him to eat, Miss Solado,” remarked Nick, as they put the man on the bed, “it will help as much as anything. We will put him to bed in the meantime.”
Claudia was only too glad to do anything she could. She went to the kitchen and foraged for supplies. She was fortunate enough to find a can of soup. This she cooked on a gas stove, and soon had it ready for the invalid.
When she came to the bedroom again she found him sitting up in bed and talking. As he attacked the hot soup, his strength came back faster, and he told his story in a fairly connected way.
It all resolved itself into this: On the morning before, he went to call his employer, as usual, and, as he passed the windows of the house, he noticed a handsome private steam yacht anchored in the river, not far from shore, so that it should be out of the regular channel of traffic.
In Prince Marcos’ room he heard a scuffling, while his employer’s voice was raised in anger and protest.
When the valet got there—which he did as fast as he could—he found Marcos struggling with two men.
Before the valet could give any help, another man appeared from somewhere and knocked him senseless with some heavy weapon—perhaps a revolver, although he could not be sure.
“Would you know that yacht if you saw it again?” asked the detective.
“I am almost sure I should,” was the quick reply.
“Good! What is your name?”
“Phillips, sir.”
“Now, Phillips, what became of Prince Marcos after that, so far as you know?”
“I came to my senses again, and staggered to the window, because I saw that the prince had gone from the room. Down in the garden two of the men were carrying him to the waterside, where a skiff was tied up to the private landing.”
“And they took Prince Marcos to the yacht in that skiff?”
“That’s what I suppose. I didn’t see it, because they caught me when I went out of the house—to help the prince.”
“You did that, Phillips?” interposed the girl. “That was very brave of you.”
Phillips’ eyes lighted up at this praise from the beautiful Claudia, as he replied simply:
“I did it, of course, Miss Solado. I had to, because the prince would have done it for me. He is not afraid of anything. However, I wasn’t able to help him. I wasn’t strong after being knocked over the head, and when two of them came for me at once, I had to go under.”
There was no “grand-stand play” about Phillips. He told his story with perfect simplicity, and as if he had done only what any other man must have done under the circumstances.
“It was very hard on you to lie there on that bench so many hours,” put in Chick.
“I thought it was death,” was the reply. “I felt myself growing weaker and weaker, and at last I was all in, my senses gone. The gag had prevented my shouting, or I might have attracted the attention of people going past, either on the river or the road. It would have been only an off chance, at that, but better than nothing.”
“You did not know any of the men?” asked Nick.
“They were all strangers to me.”
The girl could not help giving a slight sigh of relief. At least, her uncle had not taken a personal part in the attack on the valet.
These men who had come were doubtless hired rascals. She had heard of such men. There were bravos in all countries.
“Which way was the yacht headed when you saw her?”
Nick asked this question without expecting to gain any useful information, no matter what the reply might be. It was an easy matter to turn a vessel another way, especially one propelled by steam.
“She was headed up the river,” replied Phillips.
Nick thought for a few minutes. He argued that there would be no particular object to be gained by going up the Hudson, unless it was the intention of the men who had stolen Marcos to get him ashore as soon as convenient and spirit him away to some retreat in the mountains—the Adirondacks, perhaps.
On the other hand, he reflected that these men were very cunning, and would be quite likely to follow his own line of reasoning, with the purpose of circumventing him.
“They may go down the river, because they would think that I should regard that as the least desirable for them, and thus they would try to fool me. On the other hand, they might go up, and——”
He stopped his half-audible musings and laughed. He was just where he had started. His reflections did not lead him anywhere, it seemed, and he would have to depend on chance, after all.
“You will let me get up now, won’t you?” asked Phillips. “I want to go and find the prince.”
“No,” returned Nick, with a positive shake of the head. “You must remain in bed for the rest of this day, anyhow. I will leave my assistant with you. I shall go and look for Prince Marcos, and if he is to be found at all, I will get to him.”
“But do you know that Prince Marcos is in great danger—from political enemies, who will——”
“Yes, Phillips,” interposed Claudia. “This gentleman knows all about it. You need not worry. He will find Prince Marcos if any one can. You have heard of Nicholas Carter, of course?”
“What? The great detective, who caught that gang of thieves in South America two years ago?” broke in Phillips. “Is this the great Nicholas Carter? It seems impossible that I can be talking to one whom I have thought of so often. Wonderful!”
Phillips delivered himself of these sentiments with the simple sincerity with which he said everything. He could hardly bring it to his understanding that he was actually face to face with Nicholas Carter, the greatest detective in the world.
“I shall have to send you home before I do anything else,” said Nick, turning to Claudia. “My chauffeur, Danny Maloney, is thoroughly dependable. He is much more than a chauffeur to me. He is often a very able assistant in my professional work.
“I have no doubt that he would take me home safely,” replied the girl. “But—I cannot go home now.”
“Cannot go home? Why?”
“I must go with you.”
“Go with me?” echoed Nick Carter. “I’m afraid that would be impossible. You could not run into the danger that may face me when I come up with the rascals who so nearly killed poor Phillips. You can see from that how desperate they are.”
“Nevertheless, I must go,” returned Claudia, with gentle firmness.
“It would be altogether too dangerous.”
“I expect it to be dangerous. That is why I want to come.”
This was unanswerable, although Nick tried to answer it. He soon saw that he might as well spare his breath.
With a shrug and smile, he turned to his assistant.
“Well, Chick, keep close watch here, and take care of Phillips. Miss Solado intends to go with me, and there is nothing much to be said. I will go down to the boathouses and see whether I can get a power launch. Will you wait here till I return?” he asked the girl. “I shall not be long. I’ll go down in the motor car.”
“I will wait,” she answered quietly.
A few minutes later Nick Carter was in his limousine, and Danny Maloney was bowling him along Broadway to the place where the detective knew he could hire a launch.
“Joe Travers will have one, I know,” he told himself, as he leaned back comfortably, while Maloney drove on with his usual unconcern.
Joe Travers was an old acquaintance of Nick’s, and he was only too pleased to take the detective into his boathouse and show him where he had, under shelter, a power launch which proclaimed itself at first glance a fine specimen of its class.
It was about five o’clock when Nick Carter chugged up to the boat landing of Crownledge and fastened his craft to the big iron ring.
Before he could get up to the house, Claudia came running down to the riverside, with Chick and the bloodhound close behind.
Chick was glad of the opportunity of helping the pretty girl into the boat. Soon she was comfortably seated in the stern. Then Nick again took his place at the engine and steering wheel.
“Look after Phillips, Chick! When he seems able to take care of himself, as he will by the morning, I feel sure—you can go home, with Captain, and keep close to the telephone. I may call you up at any time.”
The engine in the launch was a powerful one, and the boat went shooting up the Hudson as if prepared to overhaul any other craft that might come in its way.
“Do you think we shall find Marcos, Mr. Carter?” asked Claudia, after a rather long silence, broken only by the chugging of the engine and the swish of the water past the hull. “Have you any idea where he is likely to be?”
“I may be mistaken,” replied Nick. “But I can’t help feeling that we shall get on his trail before morning.”
And, as he hustled the launch along, he believed thoroughly what he said.
CHAPTER VII.
ON THE BRINK OF BATTLE.
“There’s a light across the river, in the shadow of the Palisades,” remarked the girl, when they had gone several more miles. “It is some boat, or ship, of course. Might not that be the yacht?”
Nick Carter smiled, without letting the girl see his face. This was not difficult, for his back was turned toward her. He knew that lights on the Hudson were common enough, and that it was a hundred chances to one against this particular light belonging to the yacht they were after.
He swung the boat diagonally across the river to see.
“It isn’t a yacht at all,” he remarked, in a low tone, to the girl. “Just a barge, loaded with broken stone—to ballast the railroad over here, I guess. We’ll have to go farther.”
As they were on that side of the river, in the shadow of the Palisades, Nick kept his launch parallel with the bank, taking note of all the lights he saw, but not finding any that belonged to the kind of steam yacht he wanted to find.
They got to the end of the fifteen miles of Palisades, and found themselves moving along opposite the irregular hills and bluffs one sees farther up the river.
Houses nestle among the hills at intervals, and many dusty ribbons of roadway may be discerned criss-crossed here and there, peeping out of thickets, twisting around the shoulder of a hill, or coming seemingly straight out of the ground. The scenery along the Hudson is generally diversified and always beautiful.
Suddenly a fair-sized house appeared to jump from the blackness of a wooded slope they were passing, with lights in some of the windows.
“That’s a pleasant-looking home,” observed Nick Carter, as he kept his wheel steady while glancing at the shore on his left. “Within easy motoring distance of New York, and yet out in the country entirely.”
The girl said something quietly in assent. Then she broke out, in a tense tone:
“Isn’t that the yacht we want? It looks different from the others we have seen, and it agrees with the description we got from Phillips so far as I can make out.”
“You’re right, I think,” returned Nick, in a low tone. “But don’t speak loud. If that is the yacht, we may be sure they are on the watch for attack. They will think the police may hear of their performance at Crownledge. That would naturally mean pursuit.”
He ran the launch silently toward shore, the maneuver bringing the outline of the yacht between him and the faint moonlight showing in the sky.
“I see a man in a chair on the roof of the cabin,” he whispered. “He is smoking.”
“You have good eyes, Mr. Carter,” remarked the girl. “I don’t see anything on the yacht at all.”
“The red light of his cigar appears now and again, as he shifts his position,” explained the detective. “Now I catch the odor of the cigar. The wind is blowing this way. Don’t you get the Havana fragrance? It is very faint, but it is there.”
But Claudia’s senses were not as keen as Nick Carter’s. She could neither see nor smell the cigar.
Nick ran the launch up to the bank, and found a small landing stage, with several iron rings.
Up the hill he could make out one of the lights in the house he had discerned from the middle of the river. This landing stage was placed here for the use of the occupants of the house, of course.
Once the launch had been secured, Nick looked about him for some means of getting to the yacht without being perceived by the man smoking on the cabin, or anybody else who might be on watch.
“I can’t take the launch,” he muttered. “The chugging of the engine will attract attention at once. I’ll have to drift in with the tide and paddle with that emergency oar to get there at all. But I cannot handle such a cumbersome craft as the launch in reconnoitering. I want to go right under their counter.”
It was true that Nick had shut off the engine of the launch when some distance from the yacht. He had also put out the one light they had carried.
His object was to make the people on the yacht suppose it was some gay party taking a ride on the river at night—a common-enough proceeding—and that the ceasing of the engine sound was due merely to the launch passing on its way.
The detective was accustomed to consider all contingencies when working on a case, and it was seldom, indeed, that any of his plans miscarried through carelessness or lack of foresight on his own part.
“I could swim out there,” he reflected. “But that would be stupid, if there is anything else. Let me investigate.”
Cautioning the girl to sit still in the launch, he went ashore and found his way to a well-equipped boathouse, with a padlock on the door.
The padlock was not fastened. It was hanging loose in the hasp, and there was a key in it.
“Somebody has been in this place lately,” thought Nick. “Or there may be a man or two in it at this moment. There is only one way to find out, and that is to go in.”
The door was slightly ajar, and the detective pulled it wide enough to permit the passage of his body.
He was in the deep shadow, for the door was at the side, while the lower end of the structure ran out over the water, so that boats could be slipped out of the house into the river down the greased runways without much exertion.
Nick Carter was used to boathouses and boats. He had a boathouse of his own at a country home he owned, but which he seldom occupied for more than three or four weeks each year.
It did not take him long to decide that the house was empty. This was what he had hoped, for he wanted to help himself to a skiff.
The opening into the river, at the end of the runways, was guarded by double doors, bolted inside, but not locked.
Nick selected his skiff—a small, but substantial craft, rather broader in the beam than might have been desired if he had meant to make high speed.
Soon he had it on the runway, ready to shoot down into the water when released.
He opened one of the doors, took his place in the skiff, and let slip the catch.
The boat slid easily down, struck the water with the slightest sound of a splash, and lay gently rocking while Nick Carter got out the light oars to take him out to where the yacht lay at anchor.
It was too dark for him to see the launch. But there was no sound from that direction, and he was satisfied that Claudia Solado was sitting where he had left her, obeying his instructions to make absolutely no noise while he was gone.
He muffled his oars with a handkerchief and one of his kid gloves, so that there was no sound as he stole up to the yacht and paused in the shadow of her rather broad stern.
He was so close that he could steady himself by one of the rudder chains as he listened.
Nothing seemed to be going on in the yacht, and if he had not seen the man on the cabin roof, still enjoying his cigar, he might have thought everybody on board was asleep, watch and all.
“What the dickens they want to stay on the yacht at all for if they belong to that house is more than I can explain,” muttered Nick. “At least, until I have looked into the matter a little more.”
He deliberately threw his painter rope around the rudder chain, and secured the skiff in that way.
So long as the yacht was at anchor—as he had seen she was, swinging to the tide with her bow pointing upstream—there was no danger of harm to the skiff.
Of course, if the yacht were to start, a different story might be told.
Nick could climb anywhere that a man might expect to be able to go, and soon he went nimbly up the stern of the yacht, taking advantage of every ledge and protection on the way, until he was safely on deck.
He lay down flat behind the log cabin.
It was a handsome vessel, this yacht. Polished brass, white paint, silken curtains at the windows, and every equipment perfect of its kind, told the detective that no expense had been spared to make the vessel a fine one.
Nick Carter was a yachtsman, and he could appreciate every point of excellence—many of which might have escaped the eye of a person who knew less than himself about such things.
Cautiously he crept to the side of the cabin on the landward side. Here he was in deep shadow, for the slowly rising moon, partly obscured by clouds, was on the opposite side of the river.
“That fellow either has a very large cigar, or he smokes it very slowly,” muttered Nick Carter. “I wish he’d get through and go below. Then there might be a chance for me to find out whether Prince Marcos is aboard.”
He pulled himself to his feet, so that, when he stepped upon a block, his eyes were above the level of the cabin roof.
Here he had a good view of the smoker’s feet, only a few yards away, and could see that the man was leaning back comfortably in a deck chair, apparently quite content with the way things were going.
“I wish I could see that chap’s face,” reflected Nick. “His general shape is like that of the bigger of the two men I had the argument with at the Supremacy. Still, there are thousands of men in New York of about his build, so that proves nothing.”
This did not satisfy Nick Carter, however.
Putting two and two together, and considering that this was almost certainly the yacht in which the abductors of Marcos had carried him away from Crownledge, it was quite reasonable to suppose that this big man in the chair on the cabin roof was really Miguel—as Claudia Solado had given his name.
Prince Miguel was calmly smoking throughout these surmises of the detective—for it may as well be admitted that the big man really was Miguel—and Nick tried to determine what should be his next move.
“I might get up there and tackle him unawares,” he muttered. “Then, if we did not make noise enough to attract the attention of the crew or others on the yacht, I might squeeze a confession out of him. All I want is this Marcos. Then I don’t care what is done.”
He turned this over in his mind for a few minutes. Then he decided it would not do.
There could hardly fail to be a great deal of racket if he were to scuffle with Prince Miguel. The latter was a powerfully built fellow, and would make a desperate resistance, no matter how the combat might come out in the end.
As it happened, Nick Carter was not called upon to decide the question for himself.
While he stood on his block, peering under the railing around the roof at the man in the chair, another man came carefully up the steep iron steps to the roof and stood statuelike behind the unsuspecting Miguel.
The attitude of the newcomer was that of one who had deliberately chosen the best way to make a sudden onslaught.
Nick Carter caught his breath in stern enjoyment of the contest he felt he was about to witness.
CHAPTER VIII.
NICK WINS A POINT.
“This is a tangle all around,” he said to himself. “Who the deuce is this fellow, getting ready to lay out our friend Miguel? Can it be——”
He did not finish the sentence. At that instant some unexplainable impulse made Miguel swing around in his chair.
He saw the tall figure standing there, and, without hesitation, he picked up the deck chair on which he had been sitting and flung it full at the head of the other man.
Nick Carter saw the man put up his hands to protect his head. Then the chair smashed into him and he reeled backward across the cabin roof, holding the chair in front of him.
In the darkness, Nick was unable to see whether the chair had struck him in the face or not. Certain it was that it had taken him off his balance, and that he seemed to have been weakened in some way.
He staggered backward across the roof and fell hard against the low railing. For an instant he tried to save himself.
But he had nothing to clutch at, and could only go. Turning almost a complete somersault, he went off the roof and down into the water with a loud splash.
“A good thing he didn’t strike the deck on his head. That would have settled him. Even in the water he may not be altogether safe.”
This last thought made Nick let himself down quickly from the block and sent him scurrying to the stern of the yacht, where he could get to his skiff.
It was not an easy task to get down without being seen, for the noise of the scuffle had attracted three men who slept forward, and were part of the deck crew of the vessel.
But Nick reached his skiff, and, as he heard a gasping cry for help some distance out in the river, he rowed rapidly in that direction.
He was only just in time. In the faint moonlight he made out a ghastly white face—it was Prince Marcos’. Nick saw that he was swimming on his back almost unconsciously.
There is little doubt but that, if Marcos had not been a magnificent swimmer, he would have drowned before the detective reached him.
As it was, his arms and legs moved practically of their own volition. They had been used so often in swimming that they went through the motions mechanically so long as he had strength enough to use them at all.
As Nick Carter reached for him, the nearly unconscious man grabbed at the boat, while the water gurgled in his throat and seemed to be choking him.
It was an unfortunate grab. The skiff tipped over, and before the detective could save himself, he was in the water with the man he had come to rescue.
Now began one of those awful struggles that good swimmers dread so much, and yet which may come to any of them at any time.
Nick Carter knew it would be useless to expostulate with the drowning man. He must try to beat him off. It would be the only way to save both their lives.
But Marcos was strong, and in the water he could use his strength to the disadvantage of his would-be rescuer, even though Nick was much the more powerful of the two.
At the first collision, they went down together. Here was Nick Carter’s chance. The detective had often practiced holding his breath for long periods, so the ducking was not so trying to him as it was to Marcos.
For this reason Nick deliberately stayed below the surface as long as he could, with the object of taking all the life out of the other man. It would be possible to handle him if he were unconscious.
But Marcos had good lungs, and though they were under the water long enough to have rendered many a person unconscious, they came up without any material change in the condition of either.
Marcos had recovered somewhat from the blow of the chair, which had been the main cause of his dazed condition. The water had revived him to some extent, but he hardly knew what he was doing.
He fought wildly with Nick, trying to hold to him, and down they went again.
This time, however, the detective contrived to loosen himself a little. Getting to the surface with a frantic effort, he delivered a jolt under the chin of Marcos that knocked him out entirely.
“I’m sorry for that,” muttered Nick. “But I had to do it. There was no other chance for either of us. Now, how am I to get him to shore?”
He got the senseless man across his shoulder, and struck out vigorously in the general direction of the launch and away from the yacht.
“Hello! They’ve lowered a boat from the yacht. They are not going to let their man drown, if they can help it, I suppose. Well, they don’t get him.”
A boat with three men in it had left the yacht, and Nick could just make out its dark outline as he looked toward the half-lighted sky in the vicinity of the dull moon.
“If they get this fellow, we shall be just where we were before,” was the detective’s reflection. “I’ve got to prevent that. It will be a hard swim to shore. But I believe I can make it if I am not interfered with.”
The boat was rowing swiftly toward him, and soon there came a long flash of white light across the water which struck him squarely in the face.
Simultaneously, the man who sat in the bows, looking ahead, called out, in a gruff tone:
“Pull hard! And you, at the helm, steer toward the shore a little. I see him right ahead!”
“Aye, aye, sir!”
Nick Carter was quite aware that he could not beat the boat to shore. Even if he had been unencumbered, he could not have expected that he would swim faster than a husky man could pull a light boat containing only three persons.
But it was not the habit of the detective to yield until he was overcome by the enemy. “Fight to the end,” was his motto, and he had won many a seemingly hopeless battle by adhering to this determination.
“I wish you could swim a little yourself,” he said, in a gasping whisper, to the unconscious man who now weighed so heavily across his shoulder. “I’ll have to get you in some other position, I am afraid, or you’ll drag both of us under.”
He began to shift his burden a little, but without much advantage, when suddenly there came to his ears the low chugging of the launch.
“She hasn’t got all the power on,” he muttered. “But, by Cæsar, she is moving it a little. I always knew that girl was better than the average. She’s as good as a man in many things that you wouldn’t expect a girl to know much about.”
His quick ear had told him just what had happened. Claudia had loosened the launch from the landing stage, and putting on some of the power, was coming rather slowly to his aid.
“If she can get to me before the skiff, it will be a good thing,” he muttered. “I wish she’d hurry up that engine a little. What a pity I did not give her a lesson while we were coming up the river! However, it’s too late now. I’ll have to be grateful that she can do as much as this.”
It soon resolved itself into a three-cornered race, with the chances about equal.
If the launch were to get to Nick and the unconscious Marcos first, the probability was that the men in the boat would be circumvented. There was still another chance. Even if Nick could swim away in the darkness, so that the searchlight could not pick him up, it would not be bad.
On the other hand, if the boat got to him before the launch, then the whole purpose of the expedition up the river would be frustrated at once.
It was soon apparent to the detective that Claudia was handling the launch very well so far as the steering was concerned.
She did not quite understand the engine. Therefore, she hesitated about opening the throttle too wide, with the result that her speed was less than it need have been.
On came the boat, while the launch bored her way forward steadily in the other direction.
Nick Carter never allowed his exertions to flag for an instant. Whatever the boats might do, he knew that it would be better for him to get as near shore as possible.
“There he is!” exclaimed the gruff voice he had heard before, as the small white light sought out his face again. “He’s swimming for shore. We’ve got him now!”
“Have you!” muttered Nick, quickening his stroke. “I’m not so sure of that, my friend!”
He saw that the launch was about the same distance from him on one side as the skiff was on the other.
Allowing for the difference in speed—for the launch was coming much faster than the rowboat, even without the full pressure of her engine—Claudia ought to get to him a minute or so sooner than the skiff.
Once he could get Marcos on board the launch, the detective was not afraid of anything that might happen to himself.
He did not believe the men on the yacht would know that he had been their assailant at the ball, and he was satisfied that when they knew who he was, the power of his name, as that of a detective who had been heard of even in Joyalita, would be his protection.
“If that is not enough protection,” he told himself grimly, “then I have a pair of active fists that have never failed me yet.”
He increased his efforts, but was swimming now straight for the launch, rather than for the shore, although in a general way he was going shoreward, too.
“Stop!” bellowed the gruff voice.
Nick Carter did not answer, but the girl, trying to increase the speed of the launch, somehow got her hand on the valve that governed the whistle, and a mocking scream was the consequence.
The detective grinned. It was a good answer to the skiff, he thought, although he was rather surprised that the girl had hit on it so opportunely.
“She’s learning the launch pretty fast,” he told himself. “It’s made them mad, I guess.”
“If you don’t give up, it will be the worse for you, Marcos!” came from the gruff man in the skiff, as he waved his light about.
“Marcos, eh?” thought Nick. “This is the right man I have here, after all. I thought I recognized him. Well, he isn’t going on board that yacht again, if I know myself—and I think I do.”
He felt a thrill of satisfaction as he saw how the launch was cutting through the water, faster than at first.
“She’s getting the hang of it,” he muttered. “Hope she won’t run us down. I can’t do much dodging with about a hundred and seventy pounds of Joyalita prince on my back. Whew! He gets heavier every second.”
In another minute he saw there was no doubt about the outcome of the race. The launch was gaining rapidly.
The man in the bow of the skiff recognized this fact, and he was swearing in Spanish with such gusto that it might be wondered where he had learned so many oaths.
“He’ll have to swear in another tongue if he keeps on,” laughed Nick. “The Spanish language won’t be rich enough for him much longer. Why doesn’t he give us a few of those in English? Or in Chinese? That’s a language with good profane possibilities.”
If it may seem strange that Nick Carter could laugh under such circumstances, let it be said that it was the way of the detective to enjoy himself when things were coming his way, no matter how great might be his peril.
It was his disposition to see the humorous side even of a very serious situation that accounted for much of his success.
“Marcos!” called out Claudia.
“All right!” responded Nick. “Come along! Look out you don’t run us down!”
“Thank Heaven!” she gasped, with unmistakable fervor.
The girl had learned a great deal about the launch even in the short time in which she had been guiding it from shore, and it was with considerable skill that she reduced its speed now, preparatory to running alongside of the two men in the water.
When she had been talking about the resemblance of Nick Carter to Prince Marcos, she had mentioned the fact that their voices were so much alike that it would be easy for one to be mistaken for the other.
Now, when Nick called out to her to come on, in response to her cry of “Marcos!” she supposed it was her cousin calling.
“Here, Marcos!” she said, as she came near. “Climb into the boat. I’ll hold it as still as I can.”
“I’m afraid we shall have to lift him in, Miss Solado,” suggested Nick. “He isn’t able to help himself!”
“Oh, Mr. Carter!” she replied. “Is it you I am talking to? But you have my cousin—haven’t you?”
“Yes. He’s here. But he is not quite as well as he might be. Steady! Keep the boat where it is, and we can get him in. Never mind about that man in the rowboat. He can’t get to us in time. Let him blow.”
The gruff-voiced man had never ceased his torrent of profanity and threats. They came rumbling across the water as violently as ever. In fact, they increased now that he saw there was a boat by the side of the swimmer and his charge.
“Stop, Marcos!” he bawled. “You’d better, if you know what is to your advantage. We won’t stand any more of this nonsense.”
“Let him talk!” said Nick Carter, in a low tone, to the girl. “Can you get hold of Marcos’ shoulder? That’s right! Catch him by the coat lapel and pull, just as I give him a heave!”
“Oh! We must save him!” panted the girl. “But you, Mr. Carter! What will you do if——”
“Never mind about me. Up with him!”
It was with an almost superhuman effort that the detective managed to get the upper part of Prince Marcos across the gunwale of the launch.
Fortunately, the craft was strong and firm in the water, so that it did not tip much.
“Can you push a little more, Mr. Carter?”
“I’ll try!”
Getting underneath the unconscious Marcos, Nick gave another tremendous heave. Claudia pulled with all her strength at the same moment, and the helpless man lay across the launch. His legs were hanging over the side, but not enough to drag him out.
“Swing the boat around!” called out Nick. “Put your wheel over to the left as hard as you can! That’s right! Make a wide circle! You’ll get there all right!”
The girl maneuvered the little craft neatly until it was headed downstream.
Nick saw it with strong approval.
“That’s the way! Now put on all the power you can and hustle down to New York! We’ve fooled them, after all!”
“But, Mr. Carter!” she called out.
“Go ahead!” was all he said. “Get to New York! That’s all you have to do!”
Claudia Solado would have liked to stay and pick up the detective. But she was a girl of real sense, and she knew better than to fly in the face of a man who had saved her cousin against almost overwhelming odds.
So she opened the throttle wide, and, with the unconscious Marcos lying across the boat—his head on a mat at her side, and his feet occasionally dipping in the choppy waves as she raced along—she soon left Nick Carter and her pursuers far behind.
She had not gone far, however, before the skiff ran up to where the detective was swimming hard toward the shore.
With an oath the gruff-voiced man seized him by his water-soaked coat collar.
CHAPTER IX.
RASCALITY TRICKED.
“Aha! You didn’t get away, after all, did you?” was the fellow’s triumphant shout, as he turned the light of his flash light full upon the detective’s face. “It’s no use, Marcos! You may have things your own way in Joyalita, but you can’t do it here.”
He tried to drag Nick into the boat. But the light craft had not the steadiness of the launch, and it was evident that if he persisted, there must inevitably be an upset.
“Get in, Marcos!” growled the man. “You can help if you will. No matter what happens, you are better off in the boat than swimming around in that cold river.”
“Think so?” jeered Nick.
“Why, yes. Even if you swim to shore, we shall be by your side and catch you as you come out of the water.”
“What would be the use of my going with you to the yacht?” demanded Nick. “You would keep me there, and you know I have to be in Joyalita on the eighteenth.”
The gruff man gave vent to a loud guffaw.
“That’s just what we don’t want,” he returned. “We are going to keep you till the eighteenth is past. But come on! You may as well argue in the boat as in the water. Better, I should say. It will be more comfortable for you.”
Nick Carter acquiesced in this opinion. He saw that he had been mistaken for Prince Marcos, and it occurred to him that it would be well to keep up the deception for a short time—at least till Marcos had got away for his own country.
After that he would let these scoundrels know who he was, and enjoy a laugh at their discomfiture.
“Give me your hand!” he called out.
The other man clutched him firmly by the hand and wrist. With a spring, Nick Carter raised himself in the water, and landed in the boat, neck and heels, but without capsizing.
The detective had noticed that Marcos’ clothes were a dark business suit, so much like his own that only a very close observer would detect the difference.
When they were soaked in water, it would be impossible to tell one from the other unless the observer were very familiar with the pattern and cut of both.
“Well, Marcos!” began the gruff man, as the oarsman turned the boat around, with the assistance of the sailor who was steering, “I hope you are convinced that it is useless for you to try and get away from us.”
“I nearly did it that time,” rejoined Nick.
“Not at all. You came near to being drowned. That’s all. If that fellow, whoever he was, hadn’t seen you struggling in the water and gone after you, there would have been an end of Prince Marcos, and the people in Joyalita never would have known what had become of you.”
“You wouldn’t want that, would you?” asked Nick.
“Oh, I don’t know that it would have been so very bad for me,” was the slow reply. “I wouldn’t kill you, of course. I am not an assassin. But if you were to die accidentally, who would be the heir to the throne but your humble servant and cousin, Prince Miguel?”
“Prince Miguel!” thought Nick. “I suspected as much. Well, I’ll have something to say to Prince Miguel in New York if he doesn’t behave himself.”
Miguel was looking at him by the light of his flash light, shaking his head with an amused smile.
“You are very wet, my cousin,” he broke out, after a short pause. “Who was that person who tried to get you out of the water and whom you put on that launch?”
“How should I know?”
“A stranger, eh?”
“What else would he be?” demanded Nick. “Do you suppose I know anybody up here?”
“There was a lady in the launch,” went on Miguel. “She seemed to be much interested in you.”
“Probably a friend of the man who tried to save me from drowning,” suggested the detective.
“Ah! Very likely! She got away in a great hurry when once she had the man aboard. He looked as if he were in worse condition than you.”
“He was.”
“So that the rescuer became the rescued, eh? That was funny. Still, you have always been a good swimmer, and I never knew the time when you could not hold your own in athletic sports generally. It is a pity you are so obstinate with it all.”
Nick Carter did not reply. They were by the side of the yacht now, for the distance back had been much less than that covered in rowing from it, when a large curve had been described in the river.
Several men were on deck, and there were half a dozen lights flitting about.
Down one side of the yacht to the water was a short ladder—brass mounted and finely finished, like everything else about the vessel.
“Hello! You got him, then?”
A man in ordinary clothing stood at the gangway looking down at the boat.
“Yes, Solado!” returned Miguel. “We have him!”
“Glad he wasn’t drowned.”
Nick Carter was sure he could make out, in the way this was said, that the speaker’s sentiments were just the opposite to those he expressed.
“Well, he was nearly drowned,” replied Miguel. “Some stranger went after him with a small boat, and it tipped over. After that the two of them were nearly gone.”
“What saved them?”
“A launch came along, with a woman in it, and the other man was shoved into it. Marcos was just going to follow when I begged him to come with me. With his usual complaisance, he did what I asked.”
The two rascals indulged in a duet of laughter over this. They little thought that the supposed Prince Marcos was enjoying a joke of much finer texture than their own.
Once on the yacht, the supposed Marcos was shown into a stateroom, where a man who seemed to be the personal servant of Miguel, or Don Solado, or perhaps of both, pointed respectfully to a complete outfit of clothing lying on the bed and chairs.
Nick was glad to see that clean underwear, as well as white shirt, collar, necktie, et cetera, were all included.
“The bathroom adjoins, sir, as you know,” said the man softly. “I have prepared the water about as you like it. If it is too hot or cold, and you would like me to change it, will you kindly touch the bell?”
“If there are faucets at the bathtub, I can change it myself if necessary. Let me see, your name is——”
“Jean, sir!”
“Ah, yes! Jean!” repeated the detective. “Well, that is all at present. I will remember the bell if I want you.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Jean went out of the stateroom, and Nick Carter heard the key turn in the lock.
“Jean is polite—almost servile, in fact,” muttered Nick Carter. “But he does not forget that I’m a prisoner. Well, this is an amusing affair. I never expected it to come out this way. However, so long as Marcos gets back to Joyalita, I guess I can attend to my friends on board the yacht.”
He had been taking off his wet clothing while reflecting thus, and now carefully transferred all his personal property to the pockets of the dry suit he intended to put on.
There was an automatic pistol, which, in its waterproof case, was quite unharmed by its plunge into the river. Also, Nick brought out his pocketknife, with its many useful tools packed in the handle, his waterproof wallet well supplied with bank notes, and several other articles that he always carried. Among them was a pair of nickel-plated handcuffs, very light, but as strong as the heaviest kind made.
“I don’t suppose I shall have to use them,” he muttered, as he stepped into the bathroom, and found the water in the tub was just as he liked it—cold, but with the raw chill taken off. “Still if there should be too much trouble with my friends aboard, I should not hesitate to slip them on.”
No one came near him as he enjoyed his bath, and afterward dressed carefully in the clothes that had been prepared for him.
“I’m not such a bad-looking prince,” he said to himself, with a smile, as he looked at himself in the mirror. “These garments are the kind you buy in New York. Yet, somehow, knowing they belong to a prince, I fancy I detect an odor of royalty about them.”
He laughed at his own conceit. Then, finding that a box of cigars, of a well-known brand, was in a little cupboard at one side of the stateroom, he selected one and nipped off the end.
“It is possible these cigars are drugged,” he muttered. “But I don’t think so. Anyhow, it is so long since I had a smoke, that I shall have to take the risk.”
He puffed away comfortably for more than a quarter of an hour, deep in his own thoughts, as he sat in one of the two chairs in the cabin, and was beginning to think he would not be disturbed till morning, when there came a tap at the door.
“Considering they have me locked in, I don’t see that they can expect me to open the door to see who is there,” he said to himself, with a smile. Then, aloud, he called: “Come in!”
There was the faint grating of a lock, and the door opened. It was Don Solado who entered.
“Well, Marcos! I thought I’d come in and see how you are after your swim in the river,” began Solado.
“Hadn’t you better lock the door?” suggested Nick, with a mocking smile. “You shouldn’t tempt me.”
“There’s no fear of your getting away, if that’s what you mean,” was the comfortable rejoinder. “You wouldn’t want to swim again, I’m sure, and you couldn’t leave us even that way, for we have men watching the whole deck.”
“Yet, to get to Joyalita by the eighteenth is so important to me, that I don’t know that I should hesitate to swim if it would get me there by that time.”
“Why do you want to get to Joyalita by the eighteenth?” suddenly demanded Solado, in a different tone, as he leaned forward to look closely into the detective’s face. “What is Joyalita to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean?” broke out Don Solado, so savagely that his tone became almost a shriek. “What do I mean? Why, I mean that you are a fraud!”
“A fraud?” asked Nick Carter composedly. “In what way am I one?”
“You say your name is Marcos—Prince Marcos?” howled Solado.
“Do I say so? I don’t remember saying anything of the kind. Still, you know me, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do know you! Curse you! I thought there was something wrong about you as they brought you on the yacht a little while ago. That’s why I came down here to look at you again, and particularly to hear you speak. Now I know you are an impostor!”
“Who do you think I am, then?” asked Nick.
“I don’t know who you are, except that I believe you are the man who assaulted me at the Hotel Supremacy a few nights ago.”
“You were assaulted there, then?”
The coolness with which the detective asked this question evidently increased the rage of the other, and he snorted inarticulately.
“It was I who assaulted you—most likely,” went on Nick Carter. “I was obliged to teach a lesson to a masked man there, because he attacked me. I am pleased to meet you again, under more peaceful conditions.”
“You’ll find they are not so peaceful, perhaps!”
Don Solado’s tones had risen to a shriek again, and he shook his fist at the quietly smoking detective.
“Don’t do that,” advised Nick calmly. “It annoys me.”
“I’ll do what I please. I don’t know who you are, but I know you are not Prince Marcos!”
“Well? And then?”
“You have helped him to escape. Now escape yourself—if you can!”
As Solado shouted this last sentence, he jumped up and flung himself out of the door.
It closed with a bang, and Nick heard the lock turn.
CHAPTER X.
CHICK REPORTS PROGRESS.
For five minutes after the departure of the infuriated Don Solado, the detective remained in his seat, smoking and pondering.
He might have got to the door before Solado if he had tried, and for a fleeting moment he had some such idea. Then he decided that it would have been premature, and might have interfered with a plan he had been forming during the latter part of the interview.
“If they go after Marcos at once, they may catch him,” he thought. “It isn’t likely but they might. Let them stew over it a while.”
Nick Carter knew that Marcos would have plenty of money for his traveling expenses, and that Claudia Solado would help him in every possible way.
“Whether that young lady is in love with Marcos, or whether it is merely cousinly regard she feels for him, is of no consequence,” he murmured. “The point is that she seems to be entirely devoted to the young man. I hope they won’t be so foolish as to stop long at Crownledge. That is not a safe place for him just now.”
He decided in his own mind that Claudia was too sensible to let her cousin get into a trap again in a hurry.
“She may take him to her own home, on the other side of the river,” he reflected. “Of course Don Solado knows where she lives, but, unless he suspects his niece of helping Marcos, he never would think of looking for him there.”
It was characteristic of the famous detective that he was troubled only about Marcos, and thought little of his own predicament.
One thing was that he knew he was on the Hudson River, in a neighborhood where there was plenty of traffic, both afloat and ashore, especially in daylight. If the worst came, he would be able to attract the attention of somebody on passing craft and get released that way.
There was a good-sized window to his stateroom, overlooking the deck and the water. It was secured by iron bars, so that he could not escape that way, although no doubt the bars had been built in to keep marauders out, instead of the occupant in.
Occasionally he had seen one of the crew pass by. But no one looked in his direction. They had had their orders, no doubt.
It was late now, and for the last ten minutes that he had been sitting by the open window, letting the smoke from his cigar go through, he had not seen anybody.
Neither had there been any sounds in the saloon or the other staterooms. It was clear to Nick that Solado and Miguel had both gone to bed, satisfied that nothing could be done to-night to catch Marcos—if they had any such intention.
“I am glad it is so,” thought Nick Carter. “By the morning I shall have my plans ready to work. I don’t want to be disturbed any more now.”
He switched off the two electric lights in his cabin, and resumed his seat by the window in the dark. He was not ready to go to bed yet.
It was getting to the still hour for the morning when everything seems dead, preparatory to bursting into life a little later by another day of activity.
A few lights twinkled here and there on the water or along the shores. But, aside from them, there was nothing to suggest that many thousands of people were within sound of his voice if he should shout aloud, while a few miles down the river a metropolis of four or five millions lay slumbering.
He got up and went to the door to examine the lock.
“Easy!” he murmured. “I know the locks on boats of this kind. They are supposed to be so safe that they are more vulnerable than those which have not such a reputation. I’ll get out of this room when the time comes. But that is not just yet.”
He went back to the window and again looked out.
It was more than an hour later when he fixed his gaze on something that looked like the shadow of a wave a little way off.
“A boat, and hanging about, looking at what there is here,” was his inward comment. “If I hadn’t good eyes, I doubt whether I could have seen that. It’s coming nearer to the yacht. I wonder—— There will be no harm in trying. I don’t suppose any one will notice it. If they do, what matters?”
He put his face close to the window and whistled part of the refrain of the popular melody, “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary!”
The whistle was like that of a man who is not thinking much of what he is doing, but it had a penetrating quality which is not often heard in that sort of music.
Members of Nick Carter’s household all declared that they would know his whistle whenever they heard it, no matter what tune it might give forth—or even no tune at all.
The detective was testing the truth of this assertion at this moment.
There was short pause as he finished the line of “Tipperary,” and then, in answer, came another part of the melody, taking it up where he had left off.
The person whistling in response was somebody that Nick Carter could swear to. He smiled gently in the darkness.
“Chick, by all that’s lucky!” he muttered. “He’s in that boat, and he knows I’m here. Well, that means I must get out of this stateroom without loss of time.”
He whistled again, but shut off in the middle of a measure. This was a code signal between them, meaning “Wait!”
Quite well assured that Chick would wait till he heard again from his chief, and that he would contrive to keep out of sight of any watchers who might be on the yacht, Nick went to the door, a small wire in his fingers.
It was with this wire that he intended to open the door, and in a few minutes he had proved that he could carry out his intention. The lock shot back with a faint click, and there was nothing to prevent his opening the door when ready.
He stood just inside and listened intently for at least two minutes. Then he turned the handle softly and looked out into the corridor.
It was empty.
One electric light cast a dim light from end to end. It showed Nick the way to the outer door.
There was a short flight of brass-bound steps and a heavy door. Beyond was the deck.
What would he meet when he opened that door? That was the question he asked himself, as he took his automatic pistol from its waterproof case, and made sure it was charged with cartridges, ready for action.
The mocking smile which had been on his face during the interview with Don Solado, and which had not quite faded as he sat in the darkness, was gone entirely now. Stern business was the expression—that and nothing else.
On the deck he met nobody. He was overlooking the taffrail. In the shadows beyond he made out the boat in which sat his assistant.
Nick whistled another line of “Tipperary,” and at the same time sent a short flash of light from his pocket electric lamp in the direction of the small boat.
There was immediate response in the shooting forward of the boat until it was directly below where Nick stood leaning on the rail, looking down at the water.
The detective had not been idle during the approach of Chick’s boat. He had found a coil of light rope and fastened one end to the rail. The other dropped to the water.
“Chick?” he whispered.
“That’s who it is, chief!” was the prompt reply. “What shall I do? Come up?”
“Yes. But first make sure your boat won’t get away. Make it fast to a rudder chain.”
It took Chick only a fraction of a minute to do this. Then he seized the line and gave it a tug to test its strength.
“It will hold you all right,” whispered Nick. “Come on!”
Chick could climb like a monkey, and in a remarkably short space of time he was by the side of his chief.
The two shook hands with the silent earnestness of men who had often been in peril together, and who knew that each could depend on the other.
“Well?” asked Nick. “How are things at Crownledge?”
“Marcos is there.”
“Is he? I’m sorry to hear that,” returned Nick. “That’s where these fellows are liable to look for him. I didn’t think he’d venture there.”
“That’s all right,” was Chick’s confident rejoinder. “He’s got enough people there to hold off any kind of gang. Besides, he isn’t going to stay. He’ll be gone before daylight. Probably he is away now.”
“I hope he is. It has been a narrow tug for all of us. How did you get up here so quickly, and who told you I was here?”
“That peach, Miss Solado. She was with Marcos, and she told me in a few minutes all that had happened up here.”
“Well?”
“I borrowed the launch from her, and, believe me, I made that gas barge hustle up the river. I got everything out of her that was in her engine.”
“I didn’t hear it. How was that?” asked Nick, in a slightly mystified tone.
“That was easy,” grinned Chick. “I had a skiff trailing behind, and when I got pretty close to the yacht, but still too far away for the launch to be heard plainly, I tied up and came on with the oars. They’re muffled, so you did not hear even them.”
“We can get to the launch without trouble, I suppose?”
“Unless the bottom of the skiff falls out,” returned Chick, with a laugh. “Now, what have we to do?”
“Just this, Chick,” answered Nick Carter sternly: “I am going to take those two rascals off the yacht and hold them till I know Marcos is out of the country. You and I have to do it now.”
The difficulty of this enterprise seemed not to strike Chick. He merely answered “All right!” and looked at his chief for further instructions.