CHAPTER V.
A CHANCE CLEW.
No jungle in the heart of the African desert, no wilds of the Far West, no desert region of the ice-bound North, no corner of the whole wide world, in fact, contains beasts more to be dreaded, more crafty, cruel, and terrible, than those to be found within the precincts of a great city, in the haunts of the underworld, in the lairs and labyrinths of vice and crime.
Close upon four o’clock that afternoon, or about three hours after Nick Carter and his assistants left the Mantell residence, two women met by chance in a certain disreputable section of the East Side, and nearly in front of an inferior hotel restaurant and barroom run by one Barney Magrath.
There was no mistaking their type and character. Their flashy attire, their painted cheeks, the swagger atmosphere with which they met and entered into conversation, told the story in broad-faced type and double-leaded lines.
One was a slender, thin-featured woman with red hair, crafty gray eyes, and a sinister expression.
The other was a more striking woman. She had a fine figure, the better clad of the two, a woman in the twenties, with regular features, dark hair and complexion, a firm mouth and chin. Hers was a decidedly strong and quite handsome face, lighted with eyes that had a habitual searching and defiant expression.
The first words that passed between them, uttered by the woman with red hair, fell upon the ears of a man who was about emerging from the near barroom, and who instantly passed back of the swinging doors and lingered to listen.
“Oh, I say!” exclaimed the woman. “You’re just the skirt I want to see. I’ve been looking for you, Sadie.”
The brows of the listening man knit slightly. He appeared of a type that frequented that locality, a rather sinister-looking fellow with a black mustache.
No observer would have suspected him of being a detective—to say nothing of being the most noted detective of his day.
“The woman herself—Sadie Badger,” was the thought that flashed through his mind. “The other jade is Mollie Damon, a running mate of Slugger Sloan, a holdup man.”
Nick had obtained a momentary glimpse of both women when they halted on the sidewalk, and he had instantly recognized both notorious crooks.
“Looking for me, Moll?” Sadie Badger questioned, sharply eyeing her.
“That’s what, Sadie.”
“What do you want? Are you on the borrow?”
“Nix! Not much! I’ve got coin to burn.[Pg 22]”
“What’s up, then?”
“There’s a gent who wants to meet you. He wanted me to find you.”
“Meet me, eh?” Sadie’s eyes took on a sinister squint. “Why does he want to meet me?”
“He’ll tell you,” Moll Damon returned. “I’m not wise. That is, only wise to—whisper!”
She leaned nearer to her companion and spoke with lowered voice, but her sharp aspirates reached the ears of the listening detective.
“It’s about the trick that was turned last night.”
Sadie Badger gazed at her without a change of countenance.
“What trick is that?” she demanded. “Come across plainly. I don’t get you.”
“You don’t, eh?” Moll frowned. “Tell that to the marines.”
“Tell it to whom you like,” Sadie retorted. “It’s all one to me.”
“Well, whether you get me, Sadie, or not, the gent wants to meet you,” Moll insisted. “What do you say?”
Sadie Badger gazed at the curbing for several seconds, evidently sizing up the significance of what she had heard, and the consequences involved in whatever course she might shape.
“Who is the gent, Moll?” she then asked abruptly.
“You don’t know him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Goulard.”
“I never heard of him.”
“That cuts no ice,” Moll declared. “He’s all right. You’d better see him. If you’ll go with me——”
“I guess not! Not if the court knows itself,” Sadie Badger interrupted, with scornful significance. “Safety first, Moll. When I meet strange gents, I meet them where I’m dead sure of having the best of it.”
“I’ll send him to you, then,” Moll Damon quickly suggested.
Sadie hesitated again for a moment, then said curtly:
“You may do that, Moll, if you like.”
“Where to?”
“I’m heading for home. You know where I hang out. Send him there and I’ll see him.”
“I’ll do it,” Moll quickly nodded. “He’ll show up within an hour.”
“All right! I’ll be there.”
The women parted with as little ceremony as they had met.
“Goulard, eh?” thought Nick, having heard every word that passed between the couple. “Goulard, eh? If he shows up before I do, Miss Sadie Badger, he’ll go some. This is too good an opportunity to lose.”
The conversation between the two women had transpired in a very few minutes. The significance of it, in view of what Nick had learned and suspected, convinced him not only that he was on the right track, but also that the work he had laid out for himself and his two assistants before leaving the Mantell residence, the nature of which will appear, was likely to prove successful.
No one had noticed him in the barroom doorway, and Nick presently slipped out and started in pursuit of Sadie Badger.
“She is not acquainted with Goulard, and probably does not know him by sight,” he rightly reasoned from what[Pg 23] he had overheard. “If I have sized up the evidence correctly, then, I probably can worm out of her precisely what took place in the Manhattanville house, and possibly learn what became of Padillo and his war prize. I’ll wager I have it near enough to pull wool over the woman’s eyes and loosen her tongue. I’ll take the chance, at all events, regardless of the consequences.”
Nick had no difficulty in overtaking Sadie Badger nor in trailing her to her destination.
It proved to be the end dwelling of a long wooden block in the upper East Side. The end house in which she dwelt was within fifty yards of the swirling waters of East River. The intervening space was occupied with a motley aggregation of old buildings devoted to divers uses. They extended even to the walled bank of the restless river, a large sign on the farthest one bearing the single word: “Lime.”
“Not a savory section, by Jove,” thought Nick, after watching the woman enter the house. “I’ll allow reasonable time for Goulard to have been seen and sent here, and then I’ll tackle the woman and—well, the proof of a pudding is its eating.”
Nick waited less than ten minutes, however, apprehending that Goulard might possibly arrive before he could hoodwink Sadie Badger, and he then approached the house and rang the doorbell.
“I shall hear the rascal ring, of course, if he shows up before I have got in my work,” he said to himself while waiting on the steps. “I’ll arrest both of them in that case and land them where they belong.”
Nick had waited only about a minute when the door was opened by the woman herself, divested of her street garments, and wearing a loose woolen house jacket. She gazed sharply at him, and Nick at once said inquiringly:
“Miss Badger?”
“Yes, I am Miss Badger,” said Sadie, nodding a bit coldly.
“I am the man Moll Damon told you about—Gaston Goulard.”
“You arrive here very soon after my talk with her,” said Sadie suspiciously. “How did she see you so quickly?”
“She did not see me,” said Nick, ready with an explanation. “She telephoned.”
“Ah! Come in, Mr. Goulard.”
Nick entered and followed her into a small rear parlor, divided from that in front by a curtained doorway. Through the broad portière, however, Nick could see that the front room was unoccupied. Listening intently, moreover, he could hear not a sound indicating that other persons were in the house.
Upon taking the chair to which the woman invited him, nevertheless, Nick inquired:
“Do I find you alone here? As you may infer, Miss Badger, my business with you is of a private nature.”
The woman sat down at the opposite side of a small center table, near which Nick had seated himself. She did not reply for a moment. Resting both elbows on the table and gazing across it at him, she then said, with seeming indifference:
“Yes, I am alone here. Contrary to what you say, however, I have not the slightest idea, Mr. Goulard, why you want to meet me.”
“Why, then, did you consent to see me?” asked Nick pointedly.[Pg 24]
“Curiosity,” asserted Sadie tersely. “I wondered what you wanted and what you were like.”
“You had no other reason?”
“None whatever. You are a total stranger to me, Mr. Goulard.”
“Very true,” Nick admitted, and he was glad to do so. “Let’s become friends, then, instead of total strangers. It will be to your advantage.”
“Why to my advantage?” questioned Sadie, with brows drooping.
“Because of what occurred last night.”
“Occurred where?”
“In a house in Manhattanville,” said Nick. “Don’t you know? Didn’t Moll Damon give you a hint?”
Sadie scowled impatiently, banging her palms on the top of the table.
“See here, Mr. Goulard, I’m not dealing in hints,” she cried, with some asperity. “If you’ve got anything of importance to say to me, hand it out straight from the shoulder. I’m no riddle guesser. What do you mean?”
Nick saw plainly that the woman was suspicious and inclined to evade him. He was equally sure, on the other hand, that fear alone had impelled her to yield to Moll Damon, which convinced him that she not only knew all about the murders of the previous night, but also was more or less involved in them.
Nick now took her at her word, therefore, and replied, a bit curtly:
“I mean the fight in the house mentioned, a fight in which one of your friends was killed.”
“One of my friends? I guess not!” declared Sadie, still with affected ignorance.
“You’ve got another guess, Miss Badger,” Nick said, more forcibly. “You may as well guess right, too, and hand me straight goods. I’ve not come here to be bluffed, and a bluff won’t get you anything. You know what I mean and the man I mean. Batty Lang is his name.”
“Batty Lang killed, eh?”
“You know he was killed,” insisted Nick, with an affected display of impatience. “I know, too, that he was a friend of yours and of your brother, Ben Badger; also that he was one of the gang of which you two are the big fingers.”
“Is that so?” questioned Sadie tentatively, frowning more darkly.
“Yes, that’s so,” Nick went on, with increasing vehemence. “And that’s not all. I know that Lang and some of your gang got wise to a job I was going to pull off in that house, and that some of you got in there to queer it and get the best of me.”
“We did, eh?”
“Yes. You did it all right, too, as far as that goes, but you’re not going to get fat from it,” Nick forcibly informed her. “I’ve got that finely fixed, you can bet on it, or I wouldn’t be here. It’s safety first for mine, always.”
As may be inferred from all this, Nick was banking on the correctness of his suspicions and deductions, aiming to so impress Sadie Badger that she would enter into a discussion with him and ultimately expose all she knew about the crimes.
Only a detective of Nick Carter’s confidence, one having absolute faith in his own discernment and deductions, would have ventured such a subterfuge as this. It seemed[Pg 25] likely, nevertheless, to prove as profitable as he had anticipated.
For Sadie Badger now straightened up in her chair and replied, smiling a bit scornfully:
“You seem to be a wise gazabo, Mr. Goulard.”
“I know what I’m talking about, all right,” Nick informed her.
“You sure are some wise gink,” nodded Sadie sarcastically. “If you know all this and have got things as finely fixed as you say, why have you come here to spiel with me about it? You really think that our gang put up a job on you, do you?”
“I don’t think,” snapped Nick; “I know you did.”
“And we’re not going to get fat from it, eh?”
“No, you’re not—barring you come to terms with me.”
“What terms do you mean, Mr. Goulard?”
“I want a fair share of the plunder.”
“What plunder is that?” asked Sadie coldly.
“Oh, cut that out,” Nick again protested, plainly seeing that he was gradually gaining his point. “You, or some of your gang, have got that Mexican in your clutches, along with the stuff he had in his suit case. Don’t hand me any denial. I know all about it. You got him out through the back door of the house, and Batty Lang was shot while trying to prevent me and my friends from following him, after he had stabbed my pal, Connie Taggart. You got away with Padillo and the stuff he brought from Mexico. I know all about it—and I’m going to have a fair share of it.”
Sadie Badger’s darker frowns showed how deeply she was impressed. She no longer responded angrily, however, but with the earnestness and covert cunning of a woman bent upon learning just what her visitor had up his sleeve. She drew nearer the table, bending over it and saying:
“You do seem to know, Goulard, what you are talking about. Admitting that you do—what do you mean by having things finely fixed?”
“In case anything happens to me while here,” Nick informed her, with unmistakable significance.
“Oh, that’s what you mean, eh?”
“That’s what I mean, all right.”
“But suppose you don’t get what you’re after?” questioned Sadie, narrowly eying him.
“You’ll get yours, then, and the rest of your gang,” Nick declared. “Take my word for that.”
“Explain. I don’t quite get you.”
“That’s done with few words,” Nick went on. “You’ve got this Mexican on your hands. You’ve got to put him away in order to safely keep that plunder. You can’t let him go. He’d have the guns after you within an hour.”
“We might compromise with him,” said Sadie, further convincing Nick that he was shooting straight at the mark.
“That’s not like you, nor any of your gang,” Nick returned.
“As well compromise with him, Goulard, as with you,” Sadie pointedly asserted.
“Not by a long chalk.”
“Why not?”
“Because you know I’ll keep my trap closed,” said Nick. “You couldn’t feel sure of him.”
“Yes, we could,” said Sadie, with an expressive nod. “He wouldn’t dare to squeal. It was he who killed Connie[Pg 26] Taggart, and we know it. You’ve overlooked that, Goulard, haven’t you?”
The woman laughed derisively.
Nick silenced her laugh, however, by retorting pointedly:
“No, nothing of the kind. You’ve got nothing on Padillo for stabbing Taggart. He did it in self-defense to protect his property. He had a legal right to do that.”
“Hang it, that’s too true for a joke,” frowned Sadie, biting her lips.
“You see,” Nick added; “you’ll do much better to put the Mexican away and compromise with me.”
“Mebbe so, Goulard, after all,” admitted the woman reluctantly.
“Besides, there is another reason why you should do so.”
“What is that?”
“I am the man who made the job possible,” Nick forcibly argued. “If it hadn’t been for Taggart and me, your gang would never have laid hands on the stuff.”
“That’s true, Goulard, I admit,” nodded Sadie.
“Do you think, then, now that Taggart’s lamp has been put out, that I’m going to be buncoed out of my share of the stuff?” Nick demanded. “Not much! Your gang has got to come across with part of it, or I’ll give the dicks a tip that will make trouble for you. I can do it, Sadie, all right. I can do it and make a safe get-away for my part of the job. That’s what I’ll do, too, unless——”
“Something prevents! Get him, pals! Don’t give him a look in!”
Nick turned quickly.
The first face he beheld, of several, was that of—Gaston Goulard.
CHAPTER VI.
THE LAIR OF THE WOLF.
Nick Carter was not caught napping. Not for a moment since entering the house had he ceased to be alert, with eyes watchful and ears bent upon catching the slightest ominous sound.
Nick had reasoned, too, and very naturally, that Gaston Goulard would visit the house in the ordinary way, by ringing the bell and presenting himself at the front door. Not a word to the contrary had passed between Sadie Badger and Moll Damon.
When Nick Carter turned, nevertheless, upon hearing the threatening interruption, he beheld Gaston Goulard and three men rushing into the room with weapons drawn.
Nick recognized all three, moreover—Ben Badger, one Henry Freeland, known as Knocker Freeland, and a Jack Glidden—all members of the notorious Badger gang.
Nick did not ask himself where they came from, nor how he had thus been caught. Nor was it in his nature to yield submissively to such a situation. As quick as a flash, starting up, he reached for his revolver.
He was not more quick than Sadie Badger, however, who realized on the instant that her earlier suspicions were correct, and that there was something wrong.
She lurched forward before Nick was fairly out of his chair, throwing all of her weight and strength against the edge of the table.
She upset it on the instant, forcing it with desperate energy against the back and hips of the detective, just as he was drawing the revolver from his pocket.[Pg 27]
The weapon exploded.
A bullet tore a hole in the floor.
Nick lost his footing and pitched backward over the falling table, nearly into the arms of Sadie Badger.
She was ready for him and threw him to one side, and Nick fell to the floor with a crash that shook its timbers.
In another instant, though the entire sensational episode occupied hardly more than that, Goulard and Ben Badger, with their two confederates, were upon the prostrate form of the detective, crushing his arms and legs to the floor and holding him powerless.
“You lie still, blast you, or I’ll fix you so there’ll be no need of telling you to do so,” Goulard cried fiercely, pressing the muzzle of a revolver to Nick’s head.
“If he don’t, I will,” supplemented Badger, with a knife at the detective’s throat.
Nick gazed up at their threatening faces and permitted his vainly strained muscles to relax. None yet had recognized him, despite that his false mustache had been partly torn from his lips and was dangling over one ear.
Yielding to the inevitable, therefore, for no mortal man could have overcome such odds and such a disadvantage, Nick said coolly:
“Don’t hurry, gentlemen! There’ll be time enough to settle this matter in a decent way. I’m not fool enough to oppose such a bunch of blacklegs. Take your time. I’ll keep quiet.”
Nick had, in fact, more than one reason for doing so.
Goulard snarled an oath, adding quickly:
“By Heaven, this man is Nick Carter!”
“Right,” said Nick; “perfectly right, Gaston Goulard.”
Sadie Badger stared down at him as if dealt a blow. She seemed unable to realize how completely she had been duped, how completely she had exposed herself and her confederates.
“Get his bracelets,” growled Badger, who was the coolest of the gang. “It’s the dick, all right. Run your duke under his coat, Knocker, and get his irons. We’ll soon fix him so he can wag nothing more dangerous than his tongue.”
Freeland hastened to obey, dragging Nick’s handcuffs from his pocket, also the revolver he had partly drawn. He thrust the weapon into his own pocket. Then, with the help of the others, he quickly snapped the handcuffs on the detective’s wrists.
“Now, Glidden, bring a piece of rope,” Badger commanded. “No halfway work for mine. I know this dick from way back. Having got him, I’ll make dead sure to keep him.”
“That’s more wisdom, Badger, than you ordinarily display,” Nick dryly declared, looking up at his swarthy, sinister face. “Make a good job of it, by all means, while you’re about it.”
“I’ll do that, all right, Carter, and I have ample means at my command,” Badger retorted.
“We shall see how ample they are.”
“Is that so?” Badger turned like a flash. “Watch out from the back window, Freeland,” he commanded. “This dick may have more on us than we know for. Make sure you are not seen.”
“That last ain’t necessary,” said Freeland, with a growl while he hurried into one of the back rooms.
Glidden returned at that moment, bringing a piece of rope, and the rascals then proceeded to bind Nick so securely that self-liberation was next to impossible.[Pg 28]
Sadie Badger coolly set up the table in the meantime and replaced the articles that had fallen to the floor. She no longer appeared disturbed over learning that this man by whom she had been duped was none other than Nick Carter. She seemed to feel, like her notorious brother, that he had invited his finish.
That none of the gang viewed the matter in any other way, appeared in the freedom with which they began to discuss the situation, without the slightest regard for the presence of the detective and what he might, by some remote possibility, accomplish.
“Now, Sadie, give it to me straight,” said Badger, after Nick had been securely bound. “How did the dick fool you?”
Sadie Badger told him, concealing nothing.
“I’ve exposed the whole layout, Ben, and the bumper that queers the wheel,” she said, when concluding. “There’s nothing to it. We’re up against it.”
“Up against it be hanged,” Badger declared, with a growl. “You’ve told me nothing that cuts any ice. He’s got nothing on us for the job. We’ve got no blood on our hands, nor likely to have any, barring we put the greaser away to get his baubles. See here——”
Badger swung sharply around and confronted Gaston Goulard, who had been grimly listening to the disclosures the woman had made.
“What do you want of us?” he demanded. “Why are you here? What have you got up your sleeve?”
Nick laughed audibly, in spite of his threatening situation, causing Badger to turn and glare at him.
“That’s a funny question,” said Nick. “Haven’t you any brains?”
“Brains?”
“Do you suppose I haven’t sized up this business correctly?” Nick went on. “I can tell you what that rascal wants. He wants precisely what I have pretended to want from the woman. He will tell you precisely what I have told her. I deduced the truth and the probable move that that rascal would make, and I got in my work ahead of him. That’s all there is to it—barring that you caught me in the act. But there’ll be another side to the story,” Nick pointedly added.
“What do you mean by another side?” Badger demanded, scowling.
“Wait and see!”
“You’ll never see the other side of it,” Badger returned, with a growl. “We’ve got you for keeps.”
“Better men than you have threatened me,” Nick retorted.
“They would have made good, too, with as much at stake as we have,” snapped Badger.
“That’s right,” Goulard now put in coolly. “There is only one way to settle this business.”
“What way is that—wait!” Badger broke off abruptly. “You come with us, Sadie. Look after the dick, Glidden, and see that he serves us no trick. I’ll find out where we stand. I’ll darn soon find out where we stand.”
Nick could not hear the discussion that ensued in the back room. That it was along lines already indicated, however, which had shaped his own course and brought about his unexpected situation, he had not the slightest doubt.
Ten minutes had passed when the crooks returned, and it at once was obvious to Nick that they had come to[Pg 29] an agreement with Goulard that was satisfactory to all concerned.
The face of the whilom merchant, who had been steadily going to the bad since his financial and social downfall, wore a look of mingled malevolence and exultation that spoke louder than words.
“Now, Carter, my turn has come,” he declared, confronting the detective. “You’ve had your inning, and I’m going to have mine. You did all in your power to down me, but you have accomplished less than what I will hand to you. May the devil get me, body and soul, if I don’t wipe you out of existence.”
“As you did Batty Lang!” snapped Nick, so sharply that Goulard recoiled as if dealt a blow. “Ah, that hits the nail on the head, I see!”
“Little good it will do you to see that,” snarled Goulard, pulling himself together.
“As for the devil getting you,” Nick curtly added; “he’ll get you, Goulard, whatever you do to me.”
“Not before I have balanced my account with you and sent you to——”
“Cut that!” Badger sharply interrupted, turning after a brief talk with Sadie. “There’ll be time enough for that after a shift to safer quarters. We must get the infernal dick out of this house. If his running mates know as much as he has stated, they may come looking for us.”
“That’s right, too, Ben,” put in Sadie. “Shift him from this crib, and be quick about it.”
“Get a move on, Glidden,” Badger added, turning to the other. “Run over to the shed and see Jimmy. Send him with the truck. We’ll have the dick ready in five minutes.”
“And we’ll have the truck here in less time,” Glidden nodded, hastening from the room.
“Fix him so he can’t yip, Knocker, while I open the way.”
Badger also hurried from the room with the last, and Nick heard his receding steps on a back stairway.
With the help of Goulard, who appeared eager for a hand in any outrage upon the detective, Freeland hastened to gag and blindfold Nick, a proceeding viewed with malicious satisfaction by Sadie Badger.
Nick appeared entirely unconcerned, however, and offered no resistance. He wondered where he was to be taken. He knew from the remarks he had heard that it could be to no great distance, and he recalled the several old wooden buildings he had noticed between the house and the river.
“It must be to one of them,” he said to himself. “Probably a more secret retreat of the gang, used in case of need, or a raid by the police. By Jove, I don’t yet fathom how Goulard showed up so suddenly and in company with Badger. Nothing said by the two women denoted anything of that kind. Something must have come off to which I did not get wise. Possibly, Chick or Patsy will succeed in doing so.”
Nick had not long to wait for the contemplated move. He heard Badger returning, and a moment later he was seized by the three men and carried down the stairway mentioned.
The afternoon then was waning. The dusk of early evening was beginning to gather. Another half hour would bring darkness—and what more Nick could only conjecture.
Presently he heard the opening of a door and felt a[Pg 30] breath of air from outside. He scented the odor of burlap, a quantity of which was quickly thrown over him, covering him completely, and he again was raised from the floor on which he had been briefly placed.
Nick then was carried only a few steps, however, when he felt himself deposited on a low truck. He could feel it sway slightly on its iron wheels. Then he felt it moving, gliding quickly away, leaving behind him the house into which he had ventured so confidently less than an hour before.
CHAPTER VII.
PATSY’S TRAIL.
As now must be inferred, of course, after his interview with Sadie Badger, in which appeared most of the conclusions at which he had arrived, Nick Carter had started out to locate the suspected gang after the discoveries made while in the Mantell residence. He also had assigned Chick and Patsy the task of hunting up Gaston Goulard, in which they were engaged while Nick was busy as described.
Nick had felt reasonably sure, in fact, that these several parties, whom he knew must have been in the Manhattanville house the previous night, and presumably under the circumstances which he shrewdly suspected—he knew they would come together sooner or later. His first move was to hunt them up, therefore, before they could learn how much he had discovered and suspected, and guard themselves against the steps he naturally would take.
The latter part of the afternoon found Chick and Patsy, both in a disguise of a rather sinister character, completing a round through several East Side stuss houses, known to be frequented at times by Connie Taggart, the murdered cracksman.
They were not seeking him, of course, but were looking for the man now known to have been one of the confederates the previous night—Gaston Goulard.
They reasoned, also, that they might discover others, or hear some remarks dropped that would supply a clew to the whereabouts of Goulard. In each of the stuss houses visited, therefore, both detectives had played briefly at one or more of the tables, while sizing up the other players and listening to what was said.
They were thus engaged about half past four, in the stuss house then run by Karl Ritchie, known to be a favorite haunt of ex-convicts and denizens of the underworld.
“There’s one of them, now,” Chick whispered to Patsy, when entering the place. “He has done time twice for holdup jobs.”
“You mean Slugger Sloan?” questioned Patsy, glancing toward the table at which the gambler was seated.
“Yes, of course,” Chick muttered. “There’s a vacant chair next to him.”
“I see.”
“I’ll take it, Patsy, while you play at one of the other tables. We’ll look the place over very thoroughly, and then get out.”
“I’m on,” nodded Patsy, sauntering to another part of the room.
Very little attention was paid to either of them by the other players, and the man mentioned by Chick hardly noticed him when he took the next chair and began his play.[Pg 31]
He was a stocky, muscular chap in the twenties, with a countenance evincing depravity and vice, also a taciturn and surly nature. The latter had plunged him into numerous fights, which had earned for him the nickname he was bearing, that of Slugger Sloan.
Chick had been playing less than ten minutes, however, and was apprehending no profitable results, when something occurred that quickly reversed his opinion.
He felt a hand touch the back of his chair, and then a woman who had just hurried into the place, bent between him and Sloan, to whom she whispered, yet not so low but that Chick heard her:
“Quit the game, Slugger. I’ve fixed it.”
Sloan turned his shifty gray eyes upon her, but did not stir from his chair. The gambler’s passion was the strongest in his evil nature.
“Will she see him?” he asked, scarce above his breath.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“As soon as he can get there.”
“Her crib, Moll?”
“Yes. Get a move on,” Moll Damon whispered impatiently. “It’s more important than this piking business. Go and send him up there. You know where to find him.”
Sloan pushed his chips toward the dealer to be cashed.
“You hike home and stay there,” he muttered to the woman. “I’ll see him and set him going. Leave it to me.”
Chick caught Patsy’s eye and signaled for him to shadow the woman. Half a minute later he followed Slugger Sloan from the house. Moll Damon was waiting outside, on a corner, for the crook. They met again and talked for several moments.
Chick and Patsy watched them from the stuss-house doorway, the former stating what he had overheard.
“Why are you banking so strong on it?” Patsy questioned.
“Because I happen to know that Sloan and Taggart were good friends,” said Chick.
“Gee! it may be then that Sloan was in the job last night.”
“That’s the very point.”
“But whom is he going to see, and why——”
“Wait! We’ll find out.”
The couple had moved on and were crossing the street.
The detectives shadowed them to a house in the next block, which both entered.
Five minutes later both emerged, in company with—Gaston Goulard.
“Eureka!” Chick quietly exclaimed. “I was right, Patsy. They’re our men.”
“It’s Goulard, all right, as sure as blazes,” chuckled Patsy. “The game certainly is breaking cover.”
“They’re going to separate. Goulard is going to leave them.”
The three crooks were lingering briefly at the foot of the steps.
“Shall we shadow him?” questioned Patsy.
“You do so,” Chick directed. “I’ll follow Sloan and the woman. They may have more up their sleeves. They’re a bad pair.”
“Have you any suspicion where Goulard is going?” Patsy asked.
“A suspicion only,” Chick nodded. “He is going to[Pg 32] the home of some woman, judging from what that jade said to Sloan. It may be to the home of Sadie Badger.”
“In that case——”
“He’s off,” Chick interrupted. “Don’t lose sight of him.”
Gaston Goulard had abruptly left the couple and was hurrying away.
“So long!” nodded Patsy. “If I lose sight of him, Chick, I’ll chuck my job.”
Goulard was hastening toward Third Avenue, where he boarded a north-bound elevated train.
Patsy Garvan occupied the same car.
Twenty minutes later, without the slightest idea that he was the subject of an espionage, Goulard left the train and walked rapidly east. He brought up in the low section on the water front in which Nick Carter had arrived not more than half an hour before.
There were comparatively few people in the street, which made it necessary for Patsy to proceed quite cautiously. He crossed to the opposite side from Goulard, remaining some thirty yards behind him, and noted, with some surprise, that he began to appear suspicious when approaching the lower end of the street. He was on the same side as the long wooden block, of which Sadie Badger occupied the last dwelling.
Goulard was glancing sharply at the house, and once back over his shoulder. Upon arriving at the last door, moreover, he merely glanced at it and walked on, not stopping until he came to the river wall, and opposite a two-story building, on which was the lime sign previously mentioned.
“Gee! I wonder what that signifies,” thought Patsy. “He’s got something on his mind. He seems to fear that the house may be watched.”
That, as a matter of fact, was precisely what Goulard feared, and he resolved not to enter the front door—which was the one and only reason why Nick Carter was discovered and caught by the gang a little later.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE TURNING TIDE.
Patsy Garvan was right, as stated, in his interpretation of Gaston Goulard’s movements, and he remained concealed in the doorway to watch him.
Goulard turned back after viewing the river and the near-by lime shed for several moments. He retraced his steps with the air of a man having no special business in that locality. But upon approaching the entrance to a narrow alley making in between the end of the block and an old wooden building, and seeing no sign of any person observing him, he darted quickly into the alley and disappeared.
“Gee! that does settle it,” thought Patsy, at first impelled to follow him. “He thinks the Badger house is being watched. It must be that end house in the block, for he looked at that door when passing, but at no other. He must have decided to go in the back way. In that case—no, by gracious, I’ll not follow him. I’ll try to get that woman to help me.”
The woman had just appeared at the basement dining-room windows of the next house. She had opened one of them and was setting a bucket of water on the ground outside, evidently intending to wash the window. She turned almost immediately and seated herself on the sill,[Pg 33] with her feet in the room, and fished out two pieces of cloth from within.
Patsy made a short detour and crossed the street, then sauntered toward her. He judged from her looks that she was not a servant, also that she was possessed of no great means, which he thought would be to his advantage. He stepped to the window on the sill of which she was seated, touching his hat and saying politely:
“Pardon me, madam! Will you tell me who lives in this last house?”
The woman, thin-featured and careworn, turned and regarded him curiously.
“Certainly, sir,” she replied. “A man and woman named Badger.”
“Are you acquainted with them?”
The woman shook her head and smiled significantly.
“No, sir,” she said. “I don’t think I would care to be. Their reputation is not very good.”
Patsy now saw plainly that the woman could be safely trusted. He drew a little nearer to her, displaying his detective badge and saying quietly:
“I am aware of it. In fact, madam, I know all about them. I am a detective, as you may see, and I am anxious to watch the doings of a man who, I think, is going into the back door of that house. Would you like to earn five dollars without lifting your finger?”
The woman laughed softly, with eyes lighting.
“I could use five dollars very nicely,” she replied. “I don’t often get an opportunity to earn as much so easily. I infer that you want something of me.”
“I merely wish to use your second-floor back windows for the purpose of watching the man and that side of the house,” Patsy informed her.
“Ah, I see.”
“I give you my word that I will disturb nothing, and that no one will ever be the wiser,” he added. “I will pay you in advance. Here is the money.” He tendered it with the last, and the woman accepted it.
“I’m glad to get it so easily,” she said, after thanking him. “As a matter of fact, sir, I would like to see those people cleaned out of the house. High jinks take place in there some nights.”
“I think they soon will occupy other quarters,” smiled Patsy significantly. “May I go in at once?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“You need not come to the door. Just move a little to one side, and I will step by you and get in the window. Keep on with your work, please, so that nothing may be suspected.”
“I will, sir.”
Patsy easily passed the woman, stepping through the low window, and he then hastened up to a back room on the next floor, from a window of which he cautiously peered.
This crafty move was a wise one on his part, in that Glidden failed to discover the spy a little later.
Supposing, of course, that Goulard had gone into the house by that time, Patsy took a swift look at the surroundings outside.
There was a yard back of the Badger house, partly occupied by a wooden porch, the door of which was accessible from the alley mentioned. Beyond the alley was a narrow passageway between the rear walls of the near buildings, a passage running in the direction of the[Pg 34] river, and through which he could see a bit of the faded side wall of the lime dealer’s building.
“Gee whiz! there’s the rat, now,” flashed suddenly through Patsy’s mind. “He has not gone in, after all. He still is watching the house.”
Patsy had caught sight of Goulard’s head, thrust cautiously around the corner of a shed in the near distance. He was gazing at the windows of the Badger house.
Presently, after glancing sharply around, Goulard emerged from his concealment and approached the entrance to the porch mentioned.
At the same moment, giving Patsy a second surprise, he caught sight of a man coming rapidly through the passageway from the lime shed.
“Great guns! that’s Ben Badger himself, the king-pin of his knavish gang,” he said to himself, instantly recognizing the notorious gangster. “He’s bound to meet Goulard in the alley. I wonder if that’s been fixed.”
That it had not been fixed was speedily apparent.
The two men nearly collided a moment later, plainly seen by Patsy, and the manner and looks with which both recoiled convinced him that the meeting was purely accidental.
Their surprise and consternation was of brief duration, however, for they quickly began to converse in low tones, though Patsy could only conjecture what they were discussing.
They talked in the alley for about five minutes, and Badger then led the way to the porch, where Patsy no longer could see them.
As a matter of fact, however, quietly entering the basement door of the house, Badger caught the sound of Nick Carter’s voice, in discussion with Sadie, and the nature of the detective’s remarks, coupled with the arrival of Goulard and what he had just stated, speedily exposed Nick’s subterfuge and designs.
Patsy, waiting and watching, then saw Badger emerge from the porch and run at top speed through the passageway, and then disappear into the lime shed.
Half a minute later he returned posthaste, and followed by two men, whom he evidently had gone to get—Knocker Freeland and Jack Glidden.
All vanished hurriedly into the house.
“Gee! there’s something doing, all right,” thought Patsy, not for a moment supposing that Nick was in the house. “Badger got the gang together for some reason. It now is a hundred to one that all of them were in the Manhattanville house last night, and that some sort of a deal is to be made with Goulard. I’ll wait here a while longer, at all events, and see what follows.”
Patsy waited, constantly watching, but he did not hear the report of Nick’s revolver, nor any sounds of the brief struggle that ensued.
He saw nothing more, in fact, until Glidden issued from the porch about twenty minutes later and rushed away to the lime shed.
“There goes one of them again,” Patsy muttered. “There must be something doing over in that building, also, if the haste of that rat counts for anything. I’ll wait and see whether he returns.”
Patsy had not long to wait.
Glidden reappeared in about a minute, in company with a slender man in a blouse and overalls, both pushing a low truck.
“Gee! that’s Jimmy Dakin, known as Quicklime Jimmy,[Pg 35]” thought Patsy, who knew most of the gangsters by sight. “He must be the rascal who runs that lime business. But what in thunder are they going to do with that truck? Have they killed Goulard? Are they going to truck him to the shed and then dump him into the river?”
Patsy remained to find out, if possible. He saw them bring the truck to the porch door, after which he could see neither them nor the truck, the porch cutting off his view.
Five minutes passed.
Patsy then saw them troop back to the lime shed—Badger, Goulard, Dakin, Freeland, and Glidden, hurrying like evil shadows through the narrow passageway.
Patsy saw, too, that they were dragging the low truck—with a long object on it, covered with burlap. He watched it—but did not see it move.
Within a minute all had disappeared into the lime dealer’s building.
“Holy smoke!” thought Patsy, lingering only briefly. “Was that a corpse? If so—whose corpse? By Jove, I’ve got to make a bid to find out.”
Hurrying downstairs, Patsy found that the woman had just finished washing her windows. He thanked her again for her kindness, cautioned her to say nothing about his visit, and then he hurried from the house.
As he emerged from under the front steps, where the basement-hall door was located, he walked almost into the arms of—Chick Carter.
“Great Scott! here’s a stroke of luck,” Patsy said impulsively. “What sent you here?”
Chick was nearly as much surprised as Patsy, seeing him come from the second house.
“I shadowed Slugger Sloan up here,” he replied. “He left Moll Damon and came up here alone.”
“Do you know for what, Chick?” Patsy asked eagerly.
“Not yet. He took a long look at this house and then went down and sized up that building with a lime sign on it.”
“Gee! we must be in right. Where is he, now?”
“In a barroom around the corner. What did you learn in that house? You seem to have something on your mind.”
Patsy hurriedly told his story, and Chick’s countenance took on a more serious expression.
“By Jove, it may be that Nick was in that house,” said he. “He may have got wise to something that sent him there.”
“That’s just what I think,” Patsy declared. “I can see no other way of looking at it.”
“There is only one course for us to shape, I reckon,” said Chick, after a moment’s thought.
“What’s that?”
“We’ll begin with arresting Slugger Sloan. He may throw up a squeal that will clinch our suspicions.”
“My idea exactly,” Patsy agreed.
“Come on. We’ll lose no time in discussing it. We’ll nail him at once.”
They hastened around the corner mentioned, then sauntered into the barroom, as if with no more aggressive intent than to buy a couple of drinks.
Slugger Sloan was leaning against the bar with a glass of whisky in front of him.
Chick and Patsy pretended to be about to pass him, then the former turned quickly and seized the crook’s arms, confining them to either side.[Pg 36]
Patsy whipped out his revolver at the same moment and thrust it under the gunman’s nose.
“Don’t get gay, Slugger,” he advised coolly. “We want you!”
Sloan scowled defiantly at both, but made no resistance.
“What’s it all about?” he asked, with affected indifference, while Chick handcuffed him and removed a revolver from his pocket.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked, confronting him.
“Nothing special. Do I have to have a ticket to come here?”
“There is nothing in that kind of a bluff. This is Chick Carter talking to you, Sloan, and you’d better make a clean breast of it. What do you know about that Manhattanville murder?”
“Nothing at all about it,” Sloan declared, but every vestige of color left his sinister face.
“Your looks give your words the lie, Slugger,” Chick said sternly. “You were out there last night, and you had a hand in the job.”
“You’ve got another guess, Carter,” Sloan coldly asserted.
“Why were you sizing up Badger’s house, then, and Dakin’s lime building?”
“Was I doing that?”
“I saw you doing it. We know, too, that they were in the job.”
“You’re a couple of wise ginks,” Sloan observed, with a sneer.
“You’re not going to open up, eh?” Chick questioned.
“Not so you’ll notice it.”
“That’s final, Slugger, is it?”
“What I say always goes,” scowled the gunman.
Chick turned abruptly and pointed to a telephone on one of the walls.
“Get next, Patsy,” he commanded shortly. “Call up the precinct station. Get a wagon and a dozen men here as quickly as possible. We’ll raid that house and building on the jump.”
CHAPTER IX.
THE LAST RESORT.
Nick Carter was not long in learning whither he was bound. The jostling of the truck over the uneven ground in the narrow passage between the buildings ceased in a very few moments.
Nick then felt himself rudely lifted from the truck and carried under cover. Through the burlap in which he had been wrapped he could detect the pungent scent of lime, which confirmed his earlier suspicions.
“They’ve brought me to that building close to the river,” he said to himself. “The outlook isn’t very promising, unless Chick or Patsy had picked up the trail of Goulard before he started for the Badger house. There is a reasonably fair chance of that, in which case——”
Nick’s train of thought was abruptly broken.
Four of the ruffians had raised him again and were taking him up a flight of steps leading to the loft of the building. There they dropped him on the floor and removed the burlap with which he was half smothered.
Nick sat up and turned his shoulders to the near wall. Gazing around, he saw a large, unfinished room, partly filled with unopened barrels of lime. Cobwebs hung in[Pg 37] festoons from the roof and beams. The only light came through two windows overlooking the river, the swash and swirl of which could be plainly heard.
Gaston Goulard came up the stairs at that moment and at once flashed a sharp glance around the dismal place. He then strode quickly across to one of the windows and looked out.
Nick and Ben Badger, also, guessed what the rascal had in mind, and the latter said, with a grim laugh:
“That would be out of the frying pan into the fire, Goulard. Better take chances with the police, than with the East River.”
“I’m not looking to take either chance,” Goulard replied, with a frown settling on his white face.
“There’s no danger here,” Badger said confidently. “This place is not suspected.”
“Are the doors below securely locked?”
“The front one is locked and barred,” said Dakin. “No guns know anything about the other, or the way of getting to it. You’re safe enough here.”
“Let Quicklime Jimmy alone to know what he’s talking about,” declared Badger, with another laugh. “Take that gag from the dick’s mouth, Glidden,” he added. “I want to talk with him.”
The bandage already had fallen from Nick’s eyes, and Glidden now removed the gag, enabling Nick to speak and breathe more freely.
Badger seated himself on the top of a barrel a few feet from the detective, regarding him with sinister scrutiny for a moment. He then said curtly:
“You see that we’ve got you, Carter.”
“I have eyes,” Nick replied.
“There is no loophole for you to slip through.”
“I’m not looking for one,” said Nick, with outward indifference. “When I decide to look, Badger, I may find one.”
“Not on your life,” snapped Goulard, approaching. “If I thought that, I’d put a bullet into you on the spot.”
“You are quite capable of it, Goulard.”
“You bet I am, Carter, in your case. If there is one man on earth whom I hate, you’re the man.”
“Better your hatred, Goulard, than your friendship,” Nick said sternly. “Mr. Henry Mantell, your late partner in business, will vouch for that.”
“Curse you, I——”
“Cut that!” snapped Badger, thrusting Goulard aside when he reached for a weapon. “You’ll be given a chance to have your say a little later. Just now, Goulard, I’ll do the talking with the dick.”
Goulard drew back, white and frowning, and glanced again toward one of the windows.
“No, Carter, you’d find no loophole,” said Badger, reverting to him. “The best we can offer you is a choice between the East River, a toss in the darkness through one of those windows, or a bed in a couple of feet of quicklime.”
“I’ll let you make the selection,” said Nick coldly.
“No great choice, eh?” sneered Badger, grinning.
“None as far as I am concerned.”
“Carter, you’re a cool dick, all right. I suppose, if we were really pressed to do so, we would offer you something better,” Badger slowly added, after a moment.
Nick eyed him narrowly, noting his altered tone.
“What is that?” he inquired.
“A chance to compromise.[Pg 38]”
“Not on your life!” cried Goulard hotly. “I’ll not stand for——”
“You close your trap till I’m through,” snapped Badger fiercely. “You then can have your say, but not till then! I run this gang, Mr. Goulard, and what I say goes. Now, Carter, what do you say?”
“To what?”
“To a compromise.”
“What sort of a compromise?”
“That’s easily stated,” said Badger. “You agree to step out of this case with your assistants, keep your hands off of us and your mouth closed, and do nothing to expose us. In return, you get your liberty and——”
“Stop a moment,” Nick interrupted.
“Well?”
“Suppose I consent to such a compromise, will you accept it?”
“Certainly,” nodded Badger. “Why not?”
“Wouldn’t you be taking a chance?”
“That you might betray us?”
“Exactly.”
Badger quickly shook his head.
“Not the ghost of a chance, Carter,” he said roundly. “I know you from ’way back. I’d take your word against the national house of congress. It’s up to you, Carter, to——”
“Enough said, Badger,” Nick interrupted. “I never in my life compromised with a crook for my own safety, and I shall not begin with you.”
“But——”
“There aren’t any buts, Badger,” Nick thundered—not without a reason.
His quick ear, close to the wall against which he was leaning, had caught a faint sound, unheard by any of the others—the slight creak of a hinge on the passageway door at the foot of the stairs.
It told him on the instant that help was at hand. Bent upon covering the approach of whomever it might be, though he suspected the truth, Nick went on with augmented vehemence, his sonorous voice fairly drowning all other sounds:
“No, no, Badger, I never would consent to that. I am a servant of the law, a protector of society. My duty to both, my own integrity, the dictates of my conscience, every spark of manhood in my nature, all would forbid——”
“Oh, hang your conscience!” roared Badger, interrupting. “You’ll get all that’s coming to you, then! You’ll get——”
He broke off as if suddenly tongue-tied.
He saw the heads and helmets of a crowd of men rushing up the stairs, men with revolvers in their hands and stern determination in their eyes, a great posse of police led by Chick Carter and Patsy Garvan.
Before he could find his voice, that of Chick Carter rang through the dismal loft:
“Hands up! We’ve got you, boys! Don’t show fight if you want to live! There’ll be nothing to it!”
“Nothing but the shouting!” yelled Patsy, as the detectives and the police bounded up and into the loft.
Their increasing numbers and display of weapons awed every crook save one—Gaston Goulard.
He vented a snarl like that of a cornered wolf. Turning like a flash, he darted to the window at which he[Pg 39] had repeatedly glanced. He did not stop upon reaching it.
He dived straight through it, carrying away panes and sashes, and vanished on the instant in the gathering dusk outside.
Patsy bounded to the window and looked out.
He saw the splash of falling spray where the man had gone down in the black, swirling waters of the river. He waited and watched—but watched vainly.
No head rose to the surface—no form to tell that Gaston Goulard had not paid the price for his crimes.
The arrest and incarceration of the other crooks were easily and quickly accomplished. Sadie Badger already had been arrested, and was on her way with Slugger Sloan to the precinct station. All were in custody before six o’clock that evening.
In a room back of some lime barrels in a corner of the loft, was found not only Juan Padillo, gagged and bound hand and foot, but also the suit case and its contents—both held there by the Badger gang until they learned what course the police investigations were likely to take.
Nick Carter and his assistants had showed them much sooner than they had anticipated.
The story told by Padillo, whose relief and gratitude were utterly beyond expression, confirmed all of Nick’s deductions from the evidence he had gathered.
It appeared that Goulard and Taggart, contemplating a burglary in the Mantell mansion, had come there to look over the ground on the very night Frank read the Vandyke letter to his wife and parents. The crooks overheard him, as Nick had suspected, and at once framed up the job to get Padillo and his war prize. Not sure that they remembered the letter perfectly, Goulard had stolen into the house one day, picking the lock of the desk and making a copy of the letter during the night, and successfully stealing out of the house the following morning.
While discussing their scheme with Sloan in a barroom a few days later, they were overheard by Ben Badger, who was in an adjoining booth. He at once framed up a job with his gang, or the men included in it, to get into the Manhattanville house before Goulard arrived from the vessel with his victim, and to get away with him and his suit case.
They broke into the house through the basement immediately after dark that evening, and before Taggart and Slugger Sloan arrived, who had come to aid Goulard in disposing of the Mexican. When they undertook this and Padillo realized his situation, he at once stabbed Taggart and started in to finish the others and escape from the house.
He would have failed but for the interference of the Badger gang, whom Padillo took to be friends because of their aid, and the fight ended precisely as Nick had deduced, Padillo going willingly with the Badger gang, only to later find himself helplessly in their clutches.
He stated that Goulard was the man who had shot Batty Lang, which confirmed an earlier prediction of the famous detective—that Goulard would sooner or later kill some one.
Nick referred to this prediction when discussing the case with his two assistants that evening, then added:
“Well, we got in our quick work, all right, and saved Padillo and his baubles. He will never be held for killing[Pg 40] Taggart. Whether Mantell and his partners in the jewel scheme will be able to hold the prize, or have a moral right to do so, is not for us to consider. It’s enough for us that we shall be well paid for our work. As for Gaston Goulard—well, we shall see no more of him till the East River gives up its dead.”
“That will be never, chief,” declared Patsy. “Never in this world.”
THE END.
In the next issue, No. 150, of the Nick Carter Weekly, you will find a mighty interesting account of one of the famous detective’s most baffling cases, namely, “The House of Fear; or, Nick Carter’s Counterstroke.” You will also find several short articles, together with an installment of the serial now running.
Sheridan of the U. S. Mail.
By RALPH BOSTON.
(This interesting story was commenced in No. 148 of Nick Carter Stories. Back numbers can always be obtained from your news dealer or the publishers.)