“My money goes on that, chief,” said Patsy. “We must get after him.”
“I intend doing so.”
“Have you any other suspicions?”
“One other, Chick.”
“Namely?”
“It is rather more than a suspicion,” Nick continued, with brows drooping. “I felt it vaguely this morning, but I then was in too great haste to be deeply enough impressed to act upon it, or rightly interpret it.”
“When do you mean?”
“When I returned from police headquarters and found that reporter, Hawley, still waiting at Tilly Lancey’s door,” said Nick. “I feel sure, now, that I know why he was there, and how he happened to be there so far in advance of other genuine reporters.”
“Genuine?”
“That’s the word.”
“You think he is not a reporter.”
“I would stake my reputation on that,” said Nick, with ominous intonation. “I eyed the man more closely than when I first saw him, Chick, and it was then that I vaguely felt that we had met before to-day. It came over me all of a sudden, a short time ago, just who he is and where we met him.”
“A crook?”
“The worst of crooks,” Nick grimly nodded. “The very man to have devised such a job as this and to have pulled it off successfully, most likely with the sanction of Jack Madison. His disguise was perfect, however, or so nearly that it blinded me for a time. I refer to the rascal who twice has committed crimes involving Arthur Gordon, and who——”
“Gee whiz!” exclaimed Patsy, interrupting. “I’m on to your curves, chief. You mean Mortimer Deland.”
“None other,” said Nick.
“By Jove, that alone would clinch the theory you have formed,” said Chick. “If Deland is in this job, if you really are right——”
“I know I am right,” Nick interposed. “I ought to have instantly recalled the eyes of that rascal, at least, as I since have done. It is nearly a year, however, since we last run him down and sent him to prison, from which he was afterward brought into court on a habeas-corpus writ and contrived to escape from the two officers in charge of him.”
“I remember,” Chick nodded. “We decided that he had fled to Europe.”
“That then seemed to be his most likely course,” Nick replied. “It now is ten to one, however, that he decided to lie low right here, and where he since has fallen in with Cora Cavendish. He may have learned from her about the Madison letters, and with her framed up this rascally job.”
“By Jove, that now seems more than probable,” Chick said, with some enthusiasm. “You are weaving a net with fine meshes, Nick, for fair. No fish of Deland’s size could slip through it.”
“Not if we can get him into it,” supplemented Patsy.
“We will set about that without more delay,” Nick declared, rising abruptly. “You slip into a disguise, Patsy, and get after Cora Cavendish.”
“Leave her to me, chief.[Pg 23]”
“Find out where she is and what she is doing, and with what man she has been chiefly friendly of late. It’s ten to one that the man, in whatever disguise you find him, will be Mortimer Deland.”
“Shall I arrest him, chief, if sure of his identity?” asked Patsy, eagerly starting to prepare for his work.
“No, not immediately,” Nick directed. “We want all of his confederates and positive evidence against them. Watch him, or the woman, until that can be obtained.”
“I’ve got you, chief.”
“In the meantime, Chick, we will get after Madison and find out with whom he is having covert relations,” Nick added. “You go to his law office, Chick, and see what you can learn.”
“Leave him to me, Nick, in case he is there.”
“I will go to his residence, to make doubly sure of finding him, and we then shall have the ground pretty well covered,” Nick declared, as all three hastened to the library. “You both may be governed by circumstances, of course, and we will compare notes between now and midnight—barring that we accomplish something much more to the purpose. That’s all. We will get a move on at once.”
CHAPTER VI.
A PIECE OF PLASTER.
It was after four o’clock when Patsy Garvan emerged into Madison Avenue to begin the work assigned him, starting from home somewhat in advance of Nick and Chick, and heading immediately for Forty-fourth Street.
“It’s no dead open-and-shut cinch where to find a blackbird as fly as Cora Cavendish at this hour of the day,” he said to himself. “She may be taking in a matinée, or the movies, or having a spin with some gink in a buzz car. I’ll tackle her apartments in the Nordeck, for a starter, and if I can learn nothing there, or from the office clerk—well, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. I sure have got to find her by some hook or crook.”
Ten minutes brought Patsy to his destination, an apartment house in Forty-fourth Street, patronized largely by women of the same social status as his quarry. He entered the office on the street floor, when, with a thrill of satisfaction, he beheld the very woman he was seeking.
“Gee, this is going some!” he mentally exclaimed. “There she is, now, and rigged for the street. I’ll buy a cigar, at least, as a blind for butting in here.”
Although in disguise and quite sure that the woman did not know him by sight, even, Patsy reasoned that any unusual incident might arouse her misgivings, if she really was engaged in the knavery Nick suspected.
Patsy sauntered to a cigar case near the clerk’s desk, therefore, and made his purchase without another glance at the woman.
Cora Cavendish was emerging from the elevator when Patsy entered. She was a tall, slender woman close upon thirty, with an abundance of bleached hair, thin features, a rather pretty face aside from its paleness, and a certain sinister and crafty expression in her gray eyes. She was fashionably clad and was drawing on a pair of long, lavender kid gloves.
Passing within three feet of Patsy, and wafting to his nostrils a pronounced aroma of heliotrope sachet, she paused for a moment and said to the clerk, with a quick and somewhat metallic voice:[Pg 24]
“If Guy Morton shows up and asks for me, Mr. Hardy, tell him I’ll return in twenty minutes.”
“All right, Miss Cavendish,” nodded the clerk. “I’ll bear it in mind.”
“I have a date with him,” Cora added. “But he may tire of waiting and come looking for me.”
“Tire of waiting for you—impossible!” Hardy observed, with a grin.
“Oh, quit your kidding!” retorted the woman, laughing. “You hand him my message, Hardy, and give him the key to my suite.”
“I’ll do so, Cora.”
“Good for you. Tell him to wait, mind you.”
“No need to tell him that,” Hardy returned, as the woman swept out of the office.
Patsy already had left the counter after lighting his cigar, and he passed out only a few yards behind the woman.
“Now, by Jove, if she doesn’t take a taxi, I shall have soft walking,” he said to himself. “Guy Morton, eh? I never heard of him. When I see him, if so lucky, I may possibly know his face.”
Patsy’s wish was granted, in that Cora Cavendish did not take a conveyance. She walked briskly through Forty-fourth Street to Sixth Avenue, then turned north and increased her pace, gliding with a sort of sinuous grace through the throng of pedestrians.
“Gee! she’s in some hurry,” thought Patsy, at a discreet distance behind her. “If she can go to keep a date with the said Morton and return to her apartments in twenty minutes, she cannot be going very far. To some other hotel, perhaps, or some saloon with a side door for the fair sex.”
Patsy had hit the nail very nearly on the head. A few minutes later he saw his quarry enter a popular café in one of the side streets, where she paused and questioned a man seated at a high desk near the door.
She evidently obtained the information she wanted. For, passing directly through the place, Cora entered one of the several private dining rooms in the rear, quickly closing the door.
It was not done so quickly, however, as to prevent Patsy, who had immediately stepped into the front saloon, from getting a momentary glimpse of the interior of the private room.
He saw that the lace-draped window was partly open, that a man answering Nick’s description of Hawley was seated at a damask-covered table, and that on the latter stood a bottle of wine, partly drank, and two glasses. He also saw, nevertheless, that there was no other occupant of the room.
“He’s still waiting for her,” he reasoned. “Waiting for her with an extra glass. That’s the reporter Nick described, as sure as I’m a foot high, and probably Deland himself. I’ll mighty soon find out.”
Patsy turned and found the man at the desk eying him suspiciously, and he took no chance of a subsequent warning being sent to the suspected couple, but immediately seized the bull by the horns. Stepping close to the desk, he displayed his detective badge and said quietly, but in a way he knew would be effective:
“I am in Nick Carter’s employ, and I happen to know that you are the man who runs this place. If you wish to continue running it, you hand me straight goods and[Pg 25] keep your trap closed. Whom has Cora Cavendish gone in there to meet?”
The change that came over the man’s face convinced Patsy that he needed to say nothing more threatening. The mention of Nick Carter’s name had been enough. The man at once replied, moreover, with lowered voice:
“I’ll not yip; not on your life. She has joined a man named Morton. He’s been waiting for her.”
“How long?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Nothing; not a thing. Both come here now and then to lunch, or to buy wine. I have known the woman for a time, but not the man.”
“Is either adjoining dining room vacant?”
“Yes, both of them.”
“I’ll go into the one on the right,” said Patsy, with a glance at the several closed doors. “Call that waiter away, so he’ll not be butting in there.”
“You mean into your room?”
“That’s what. Let him serve the couple, if they order anything, but you make sure that he doesn’t put them wise to me, or to anything else, or your license will go so high in the air you could not see it with the Lick telescope.”
The proprietor actually turned pale, so impressive was Patsy, and he muttered quickly:
“You leave it to me. I’ll fix the waiter, all right. Go ahead as soon as you please.”
“Gee! I’ve got him well muzzled,” thought Patsy, now seeking the adjoining dining room. “He looks as if I already had put his place on the blink. He wouldn’t dare say his soul’s his own. Now, by Jove, I must get in unheard.”
Patsy opened and closed the door noiselessly, entering the room. It was like that occupied by Cora Cavendish and her companion, but the plastered wall between the two rooms precluded playing the eavesdropper in that direction.
Turning to the window, therefore, Patsy began to raise it by slow degrees until he could lean out cautiously. He then found that the other window was only four feet away, and through the opening, for it had been raised several inches for ventilation, he could hear the voices of the suspected couple.
One object caught his eye, moreover, that alone served to confirm the theory Nick had formed.
Cora Cavendish had taken a chair, but had drawn it away from the table. She was seated close to the open window. She had removed her long lavender gloves and her left arm was rested on the window sill, her fingers toying with the lace draperies.
Between the filmy curtains Patsy caught sight of her hand and arm, bare nearly to the elbow.
On the fleshy part of it, directly over one of the blueish veins, was nearly a square inch of pink court plaster.
“By gracious, that clinches it!” thought Patsy. “The chief is right. That plaster covers the cut from which some blood was taken. Give us time, now, and we’ll surely deliver the goods.”
In the meantime, with ears alert, he could hear Cora Cavendish saying a bit sharply, as if irritated:
“I cannot be in two places at once, can I? Cut out[Pg 26] your kicking and get down to business. I came here as soon as I could after doing the other job.”
“Well, what’s the result?” demanded her companion curtly. “Did you see him?”
“Gee! that’s Deland’s voice, all right,” thought Patsy. “He is not disguising it, now, and there’s no mistaking it.”
“Sure I saw him,” said Cora, still snappishly.
“What did he say?”
“What you’ll not like to hear, Mortie, take it from me.”
“Use my other name, you fool! I’m not looking for a free ride up the river.”
“None can hear us in this place,” said Cora, less petulantly. “I’ll tell you what he said, Guy. He called me down in good shape, along with all the rest of us, over my shoulder. He’s up in the air a mile.”
“He’ll come down,” said Deland, with sinister coldness.
“Don’t be so sure of it.”
“I’ll find a way to bring him down, then.”
“He’s nursing an awful kick.”
“He’ll kick against a brick wall, Cora, in that case,” Deland said, with an icy assurance that Patsy readily remembered. “I’ll puncture his tires so quickly that he’ll turn turtle.”
“Well, mebbe so,” allowed the woman doubtfully.
“What more did he say?” Deland continued. “Did you get any part of the coin?”
“Not a copper of it,” said Cora curtly.
“Why was that?”
“He says that he won’t settle.”
“Won’t settle!”
Patsy heard Deland’s teeth meet with a sudden fierce snap.
“That’s what he said, Guy, and he as good as fired me out of the crib,” replied Cora inelegantly. “You’ll have to see him yourself if you——”
“See him—you bet I’ll see him,” Deland broke forth in tones that would have chilled an ordinary hearer. “I’ll see him, all right, and I’ll lose no time about it.”
“What need of rushing things?”
“Need enough.”
“Why? Won’t it keep?”
“No, hang it, nothing keeps when that infernal sleuth takes up a case,” Deland snarled viciously. “You don’t yet know what has happened.”
“Sleuth—what sleuth?” Cora’s arm vanished like a flash from Patsy’s cautious gaze, when she swung round in her chair. “You don’t mean——”
“You ought to guess what I mean, Cora, and whom.”
“Not—not Nick Carter?”
“Yes. May the devil get him—and I’ll help him do so.”
“What has occurred?” Cora demanded, voice quaking.
“Carter began an investigation this morning,” Deland now informed her. “I was there in disguise to learn who was put on the case and what was suspected. Phelan, the headquarters man, was the first to show up, and he played dead easy into our hands.”
“He got after Gordon?”
“He sent a gun to get him, and I now know that Gordon was arrested and taken down to headquarters, along with the evidence against him.”
“Why are you so stewed, then? That ought to be good enough.[Pg 27]”
“So it would be—if it had lasted!” snapped Deland.
“Lasted—what do you mean?”
“I mean that Carter showed up at the house a little later and had a look at things,” Deland explained. “He didn’t know me from a side of leather, but he refused to let me in or to put me wise to what he suspected. He flew down to headquarters, instead, and Gordon was liberated.”
“Is that so?”
“When Carter returned he told the reporters that there had been no arrest, and that the whole business in so far as Gordon was concerned was a mistake.”
“That looks mighty bad,” said Cora, after a moment. “How do you size it up?”
“Hang the cursed dick, Cora, there’s only one way to size it up,” Deland again replied, with a snarl. “Carter got wise to something, enough to warrant his taking the chance of liberating Gordon.”
“That’s evident enough.”
“I then decided to bolt. I thought he might light on me next. That’s why I’m stewed and so hot around the collar,” Deland went on, with bitter ferocity.
“But this job——”
“The job must be wound up at once,” snapped Deland, again interrupting. “We must have that promised coin before Carter can get in his work. Won’t settle, eh? By heavens, I’ll soon see whether he’ll settle. He’ll settle, all right, or he’ll hear something drop.”
“But——”
“There aren’t any buts to it,” Deland fiercely insisted. “This trick must be turned and turned at once. Did you leave him at home?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’ll get after him, then, and bring him down to cases. You move lively, too, and get next to Flynn. Tell him where I have gone and that I may need help. Send Plugger out there with Daggett and Tobey. Tell them to nose round till they find out what’s doing. Come on at once. There’s no time to lose.”
Patsy Garvan heard the viciously determined rascal push back his chair from the table with a violence that upset one of the glasses and broke it. The tinkling of the falling glass easily reached his ears, and in another moment he heard the couple hurriedly leaving the room.
“Gee! he’s off with blood in his eye, all right,” thought Patsy. “He must have been talking about Jack Madison, though it’s no dead-sure thing. I’ll follow him and find out. Plugger Flynn, eh? So he was in the job, along with Jim Daggett and Buck Tobey, three fine East Side blacklegs. Thundering guns! I’m on the hind seat of the wagon, but I don’t believe they can shake me.”
The last arose in his mind when, emerging from the private dining room, he discovered that Deland and Cora Cavendish already were passing into the street, in which the daylight of the October afternoon was merging into dusk.
Seeing that neither of the suspects was looking back, however, Patsy darted after them and quickly reached the street.
Deland was springing into a taxicab, and in another moment he was riding rapidly away, so rapidly that pursuit was out of the question.
Cora Cavendish paused briefly on the curbing to watch the swiftly departing car, and then she turned abruptly and hurried away.[Pg 28]
“Hang it! I’ve lost him temporarily, at least, do what I might,” Patsy muttered. “There’s nothing to it, now. I have only one string to my bow. I will follow the woman.”
CHAPTER VII.
A BLOW FROM BEHIND.
Nick Carter did not hurry to arrive at the suburban residence of Mr. John Madison. He hardly expected, in fact, to find him at home before early evening; but he wanted to see him when he did arrive.
It was close upon six o’clock when Nick entered a gate leading into the extensive side grounds, and dusk then had deepened into darkness.
Only a single light was to be seen in the imposing wooden dwelling, and that shone out faintly through the glass walls of a large conservatory attached to the house. It came from a window beyond the projecting hothouse.
“That don’t look as if many of the family are at home,” thought Nick, stepping lightly over the gravel walk that wound between the trees of a park and led to a side door of the house.
“It may be that only his wife and children are here, though servants are essential to—humph!” Nick abruptly digressed. “It is barely possible that he has sent them away, servants and all, if he really is engaged in the knavery I suspect. Discretion certainly would impel some such step.”
Nick turned the corner of the conservatory, then saw a brighter beam of light from under the lowered shade of a library window. He crept near enough to peer into the room.
There was only one occupant—the man the detective was seeking.
Mr. John Madison was seated at a flat, cloth-topped desk in the middle of the spacious room. It was covered with pamphlets, documents, and writing materials. A tall library lamp with a pale-green silk shade stood near by. Its rays lent an unnatural hue to the man’s face, a sort of ghastly, greenish pallor seen neither in life nor death.
He was a powerful, imposing man, with broad shoulders and a large head. He was smoothly shaved, with strong, aggressive features, a square jaw, and thin lips, heavy brows, and a mop of black hair.
He sat gazing intently at the top of his desk, but Nick saw at a glance that his mind was elsewhere. His thin lips were drawn. His heavy brows hung like frowning battlements over his vacant eyes. His large hands were gripping the arms of his chair.
Nick moved on quietly to the side door and touched the electric bell.
It was not answered for several moments. Then a heavy tread could be heard in the side hall.
“No servant ever treads like that,” thought Nick. “He could not hold his job.”
The door was opened by Mr. Madison himself. He turned a switch key in the near casing, and a flood of light filled the side hall and fell on the figure and face of his visitor.
Madison recoiled slightly, then instantly caught himself.
“Why, good evening, Mr. Carter,” said he, with his sonorous voice only a bit unsteady on the first two words.[Pg 29]
“Good evening, Mr. Madison.”
“This is a surprise. Walk in,” said the lawyer. “I am glad to see you.”
Nick entered, smiling and shaking the other’s extended hand. It felt cold and clammy in that of the detective.
“I came out this way on business, Mr. Madison, so I dropped in only for a short call,” Nick observed. “I want to discuss the approaching election with you, or one feature of it.”
“Ah! Is that so?”
“I hardly expected, nevertheless, to find you at this hour,” Nick added.
“I have not been in town to-day,” Madison replied deliberately.
“No?”
“I have not been feeling well. My wife and children are visiting in Boston for a few days, and I have given the servants a like holiday. Come into the library. Sit down and help yourself. There are matches in the tray.”
Madison placed a box of cigars on the desk while speaking, then resumed the swivel chair, from which he had arisen to admit his visitor.
Nick had removed his hat and overcoat and left them in the side hall. He took a chair directly opposite the burly politician. He had, apparently, no aggressive intentions.
The aroma of pinks and heliotrope was wafted from an alcove near by, from which a door led into the conservatory. The door was open a few inches, admitting the scent of the flowers.
“You are not seriously ill, I hope,” Nick remarked, while he accepted a cigar and lit it.
“Oh, no!” Madison shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s a touch of bronchitis, brought on by too much speaking in political rallies. That raises the deuce with one’s throat. A day or two of rest will restore me.”
“I hope so,” said Nick.
“You said, I think, that you wish to discuss some feature of the present campaign. To what did you refer?”
Nick dropped his burned match into a cuspidor.
“To the hard fight you and Gordon are making to carry your congressional district,” he remarked, hooking his thumbs through the armholes of his vest and blowing a wreath of smoke toward the ceiling.
“It is a hard fight, Carter, no mistake.”
“Do you expect to win out?”
“I hope to, of course.”
“You will leave no stone unturned, I suppose?”
“No stone that can be legitimately turned. I shall disturb no other.”
“That goes without saying.”
“But why your interest in the fight?” Madison asked deliberately, in subdued yet sonorous tones. “I was not aware that you ever dipped into politics beyond casting your vote.”
“Well, not often,” Nick admitted. “Occasionally, however, I make a play in politics. This happens to be one of the occasions.”
There was an indescribably ominous intensity in the steady gaze with which the eyes of these two men were fixed upon each other. Not for an instant did either deviate or waver.
Not for a moment, moreover, was the surrounding silence broken by any sound save their voices. Yet not[Pg 30] once had either been raised above an ordinary pitch, or tinctured any betrayal of their true feelings. Invariable suavity and politeness, rather, seemed to imbue them.
“Why this occasion, Mr. Carter?” Madison questioned. “Why your interest in this particular fight?”
“Because of what befell your opponent this morning,” said Nick.
“Befell Mr. Gordon?”
“Yes.”
“What was that?”
“He was arrested on suspicion of having murdered a woman last night in a Columbus Avenue flat,” said Nick.
Madison heard him without a change of countenance.
“Gordon arrested on such a charge as that? Is it possible?” he replied.
“It is more than possible. It is a fact.”
“I have not seen to-day’s papers,” Madison said indifferently.
“There is no report of it in the papers.”
“No?”
“None whatever.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I prevented it, Madison, and had Gordon liberated,” said Nick. “I knew publicity might ruin his chances of election.”
“You are a Gordon man, then.”
Madison now spoke with a covert sneer.
“Well, yes, to be perfectly frank with you,” bowed Nick. “So I suppressed the newspaper stories, and had Gordon liberated and the accusation killed. That is the little political play I have made. Aside from that, however, I had other reasons for making it.”
“What reasons, Carter?”
“I do not believe Gordon committed the crime,” said Nick. “I have, in fact, found positive proof that he did not.”
“Indeed? Someone, then, must have blundered.”
The last vestige of color now had left Madison’s face. His strong features were taking on the haggard look of a long illness. Not once did his intense eyes leave those of the detective, however, or his powerful figure relax from its rigid attitude of strained attention.
“Yes, some one blundered,” Nick agreed, bowing again. “The blunder is going to prove costly, too, to the persons involved. The victim of the murder, Madison, was a woman named Matilda Lancey.”
“Indeed?” Madison’s face hardened perceptibly. “I was acquainted with her. We used to be friendly in a way.”
“Used to?”
“That is what I said. I have not had her to lunch, or in any other way associated with her, for months.”
“Your friendship with her ended, I infer.”
“Yes. That’s about the size of it.”
“Has she approached you in any designing way since the termination of your friendliness?”
“How designing?” Madison demanded, brows drooping. “What do you mean, Carter?”
“I mean with threats of blackmail, or anything of that kind.”
“I don’t recall that she has.”
“You would be likely to remember it, wouldn’t you?”
“Certainly,” Madison bluntly admitted. “But there is nothing in that. How could she blackmail me?”
“By threatening to publish your compromising letters,[Pg 31] Mr. Madison, which you employed crooks to steal from her, and which last night was accomplished, resulting in her death at their hands,” Nick now said more sternly.
Madison’s teeth met with a snap. He lurched forward in his chair, eyes blazing, and banged his fist upon the desk.
“See here, Carter!” he cried, with a volcanic outbreak of rage. “If you have come here to insult me, or——”
“Oh, don’t get excited,” Nick interrupted, checking him with a quick, commanding gesture. “There is nothing in that, Madison, and you ought to know it. I will tell you with very few words why I have come here. Hear them like a man, not turn bull in a china shop. You know that neither bluster nor bluff have any effect upon me.”
Madison straightened up again and governed his resentment, though it still glowed in his eyes and caused a vicious twitching of his thin lips.
“Out with it, then,” he said harshly. “Why are you here, Carter? What do you want?”
“The truth,” said Nick shortly.
“About what?”
“The murder of Tilly Lancey.”
“I know nothing about it.”
“And I know, Madison, that that is a falsehood,” Nick said sternly. “I know that she was killed by persons employed by you to commit that crime, or to recover the letters you have written to her. I know who the culprits are, some of them, and within six hours I will have them behind prison bars. One is Cora Cavendish, a disreputable friend of the murdered woman. Another is Mortimer Deland, a notorious English crook. I know so much, Madison, in fact, that unless you confess the whole truth here and now, I will railroad you to the Tombs for safe-keeping until——”
“Stop—stop! You have said enough,” Madison interrupted, with a groan. “I will tell you, Carter, I will confess the whole truth. I am in wrong, horribly wrong, but I will tell you all. I will——”
An oath interrupted him—an oath and a blow.
Both came from a man who had stealthily approached the house, peered in through the window, stolen in through the open conservatory, all so noiselessly that he had reached the alcove unheard—and from which he leaped, and, with a single bound, reached the unsuspecting detective.
A blackjack in his uplifted hand fell like a flash, fell squarely on the detective’s head, meeting it with a single sickening thud.
And Nick Carter pitched forward and rolled out of his chair, crashing to the floor, as dead to the world as if he had been felled by a thunderbolt.
His assailant was Mortimer Deland.
CHAPTER VIII.
DRIVEN TO THE WALL.
John Madison had sprung to his feet, uttering a cry, vainly attempting to prevent the lightninglike assault. But it had been made so quickly and with such vicious determination that Nick himself had received not the slightest warning of the terrible blow.
“Good heavens! What have you done? You have killed him!” gasped Madison, when the detective fell insensible to the floor.
Deland turned on him like a flash, with features dis[Pg 32]torted and murder in his eyes. He whipped out a revolver and thrust its muzzle against the lawyer’s burly form.
“Sit down!” he cried, with a wolfish snarl. “Sit down, or I’ll send you after him. I’m here for business, and you’ll find I mean it.”
Madison shrank instinctively from the deadly weapon, sinking back on his chair, as ghastly with fear and dismay as if the hand of death already had been laid upon him.
“Sit quiet, now,” snarled Deland, still with terrible ferocity. “If you stir, hang you, I’ll send a bullet into you.”
Madison’s only reply was a hopeless groan.
Deland placed his revolver on the chair from which the detective had fallen, face down on the floor, with one arm crooked under his battered head.
Crouching beside him, with one eye constantly on the lawyer, Deland drew up Nick’s coat and got his revolver, thrusting it into his own pocket. Then, fishing out the detective’s handcuffs, he drew Nick’s arms behind him and locked the iron around his wrists.
All was accomplished in a very few seconds, and with the brutal energy and determination of one ready to meet opposition with instant bloodshed.
Rising, Deland then dragged Nick a few feet from the desk, to which he then turned, seizing his revolver and taking the chair from which the detective had fallen.
“Killed him, eh?” he now snarled coldly, fixing his glittering eyes on the ghastly face of the lawyer. “It will be a good thing for you, for both of us, if I have killed him. That’s the only look in we’ve got. If I haven’t done it, blast him, I’ll do it later.”
Madison pulled himself together with an effort and straightened up in his chair. He already knew how lawless and desperate a knave confronted him, but his first flush of fear had subsided.
“Don’t talk of killing, Deland,” he hoarsely protested. “There has been killing enough—more than enough, God knows!”
“And God knows, too, that more may be necessary,” Deland returned, with icy austerity.
“Why do you say that? Why necessary?”
“For your own safety and mine,” declared Deland, with merciless severity. “That’s a clever question to come from you, Madison, after hearing the accusations of this infernal dick.”
“But——”
“Oh, I know what he has been saying and why he said it. I have been listening outside of the window and in the conservatory. Luckily the outer door was unlocked and that in the alcove open, so that I could get in noiselessly. But for that, Madison, it might have been all over but the shouting—all over for you but paying the price!”
“I shall pay no price for crimes which you——”
“Stop right there!” snapped Deland, jerking his chair nearer the table. “You will pay what I dictate for what has been done.”
Madison recoiled involuntarily from the fierce, threatening eyes of the vicious rascal.
“What you dictate——”
“What I dictate—yes!” Deland cut in sternly. “I heard what you finally said to this cursed dick. He had you driven to the wall. You were ready to throw up your hands, to squeal on your pals, to confess the whole[Pg 33] business. Do you think I would stand for that? Not much, Madison, not much!”
“But he knows——”
“I don’t care what he knows. We must prevent him from making use of it.”
“Impossible.”
“Wait and see! Twice this cursed Carter has foiled my cleverly laid plans, and twice he has sent me to prison. There shall be no third time—not on your life! I’ve got it in for him good and hard. I will send him to the devil on greased rollers. I will send you with him, Madison, if you balk against my demands.”
“You are quite capable of it, Deland.”
“You’ll find I am.”
“What are your demands?” Madison now asked with a growl, apprehending no immediate violence. “What do you mean by that?”
“You know what I mean.”
“On the contrary——”
“You’ll put over no lawyer’s trick on me,” Deland again interrupted. “Cora Cavendish has been out here, hasn’t she?”
“Yes. She was here two hours ago.”
“Why do you question me, then? She told you what I want.”
“You mean, Deland, that she delivered your message?”
“What’s the difference? I sent her out here to get the first installment you promised us.”
“So she said.”
“The situation now has changed, so changed for the worse that I now want all that you promised us,” Deland added, with sinister vehemence. “I not only want it, Madison, but I’m going to have it.”
“No, Deland, you are not,” said Madison, with more firmness than he yet had displayed.
“What’s that?”
Deland’s jaws closed with an audible snap.
“You heard what I said.”
There was a moment or two of silence.
Deland appeared briefly staggered by the altered attitude of the lawyer.
He was not alone, moreover, in hearing that last semi-defiant remark.
Nick Carter was reviving. Inured to hard knocks, his head had sustained much better than either of his companions suspected the blow it had received.
Nick heard the remark, however, much as one hears in a dream, or the voice of one at a distance. It began to bring him to himself, nevertheless, and with slowly returning consciousness a realization of his position and of what had occurred.
With these came, too, a more keen appreciation of the entire situation, and the cobwebs then cleared from his brain more rapidly. A definite thought had leaped up in his mind, quickly followed by another and another.
“By Jove, I was knocked out. Madison has another visitor. One of his confederates, one of the gang of crooks, showed up here. It is to him he is talking.”
Nick had not stirred—did not stir.
“I’ll wait for more,” was the thought that followed. “I will hear what is said. It may be Deland himself. I can rely upon Chick and Patsy.”
Stretched prostrate on the floor a few feet from the desk, with his face upturned in the full rays from the lamp, Nick had not ventured to lift so much as a corner[Pg 34] of an eyelid, lest the movement of it might be seen and rightly interpreted. He continued motionless and silent, as if still dead to the world, and in another moment the familiar voice of Deland fell upon his ears and convinced him of his assailant’s identity.
“Yes, I heard what you said, Madison,” he replied, with sudden ominous coldness. “I heard what you said—but you do not mean it.”
“On the contrary, Deland, I do mean it,” declared the lawyer, more forcibly.
“That you will not settle with me and my pals for what we have done?”
“That is precisely what I mean.”
“By Heaven, then, you shall pay the price in another way!” cried Deland, with renewed ferocity. “You shall meet the fate which—ha! they are here, now. We will see—we will see!”
“You’ll not be alone in seeing,” thought Nick, now comparatively himself again.
A low, peculiar whistle had come from within the conservatory. It brought Deland to his feet on the instant, turning quickly toward the alcove through which he had entered.
Three men now emerged from it, following close on the heels of one another. Though all were well dressed, all were of dark and sinister aspect, with faces that wore the unmistakable stamp of the crook.
Nick seized this opportunity for a momentary glance at them, and he instantly recognized all three as East Side gangsters, as Patsy Garvan had identified them by the names he had heard mentioned by Deland.
“Holy smoke!” exclaimed the foremost, with a glance at the motionless form of the detective. “Is the world coming to an end? How did you get the big dick, Mortie?”
“Plugger Flynn, as bad an egg as was ever laid,” thought Nick.
“I had to get him, Plugger, and get him good,” said Deland, more coolly. “He had Madison on the run.”
“He did, eh?” Flynn glared at the lawyer. “Not going to squeal, was he?”
“That’s what.”
“Hang him, then. I’ll close his trap so he can’t squeal, as sure as——”
“You keep your gun in your pocket, Daggett,” snapped Deland, when he saw the other reaching for a revolver. “There’ll be time enough for that, if it comes to that kind of a play. But we’ve got him so he’ll not squeal, and where he’ll be glad to settle. You’ve arrived just in time.”
“We hiked out here on the run after seeing Cora,” nodded Flynn.
“She told you——”
“The whole business, Mortie,” put in a slender, crafty-looking rascal known as Buck Tobey, chiefly because of his passion for bucking a faro game. “But how did the dick get wise to so much?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Deland. “How in thunder do I know?”
“Does he know about the red liquor? Does he know it came from the skirt, and that I was the one that sprinkled it on the banker? If he does, by thunder, and that you three ginks croaked——”
“Shut up!” snapped Deland. “It now makes no dif[Pg 35]ference what he knows. We’ll fix him so he can make no use of it.”
“That’s got to be done,” Plugger Flynn declared, with a growl.
“And the sooner it’s done, Mortie, the better,” added Daggett, glaring down at the detective. “It’ll be a good job to wipe out this dick. If the rest of his push know too much, we’ll croak them, also.”
“There’ll be time enough for all that,” said Deland, with characteristic assurance. “I first will finish with this infernal squealer and find out where he stands.”
“He’ll settle, by thunder, or we’ll stand him on his head,” snarled Daggett, jerking a chair toward the desk and sitting down. “Get after him, Deland. You’ve been doing the talking.”
CHAPTER IX.
THE CLOSED DOOR.
Nick Carter needed to hear no more than the significant remarks already made, nor really needed to have heard them, in fact, to convince him that his earlier suspicions and deductions, as well as the theory he had formed concerning the terrible crime were almost absolutely correct.
Nick now felt reasonably sure, too, since learning that Cora Cavendish had sent the three crooks out there, that Patsy must have got on her track before that was done, and he was borrowing no trouble as to the outcome of his own situation.
The only point that Nick now wanted to clear up, in fact, was the precise relations that had existed between Madison and this gang of thugs, and he knew that he was in a fair way of doing so.
John Madison had not stirred from the swivel chair in which he was seated. Nor had he spoken, or even changed countenance, during the vicious remarks that had passed between the several crooks. He really appeared indifferent to them, and he now wore the grimly determined aspect of a man who had made up his mind what to do, and had the nerve, and stamina to do it.
Deland was quick to observe all this, and his evil eyes had an uglier gleam when he resumed his seat at the desk to continue his talk with the lawyer, while Daggett, Flynn, and Tobey occupied chairs near by.
“Now, Madison, let’s get right down to cases,” Deland began, whipping out each word with ominous asperity. “I’ll say what I mean and you do the same. You are up against one of two things. You’re going to settle with us, as you agreed to do, or you’re going to be sent up for the murder of Tilly Lancey. There’s no middle course for you.”
“H’m, I see,” thought Nick, already sizing up the situation. “No middle course for him, eh? I’ll lay one out for him, then, unless I’m much mistaken.”
Madison did not reply for a moment. He drew up his powerful figure a little higher in his chair, and bestowed a frowning glance upon each of the rascals confronting him. His gaze finally settled upon Deland’s evil face, however, and remained there.
“I will be sent up for the murder of Tilly Lancey, will I?” he slowly answered.
“That’s what you will,” Deland nodded. “That’s one course.”
“How can I be sent up for a crime that you scoundrels committed?[Pg 36]”
“We’ll swear it onto you, and we have the stuff to fix it so it will stay. I’ve got the bunch of letters you wrote to her. We’ll chuck them in for evidence. We’ll frame you up, all right, and in a way that will let us down dead easy. You can bank on that.”
“And bank on it good and strong, too,” put in Plugger Flynn, pounding the desk top with his fingers.
“You fellows are a fine gang with which to do business,” said Madison, with manifest contempt in his deep voice. “Either one of you would double cross his own mother. I ought to have known it in the beginning, but I was caught by the bait you threw me. The only other course is for me to settle, you say?”
“You heard what I said,” snapped Deland.
“I’ll have my say, now, for a moment,” Madison returned. “You approached me a week ago, Deland, with a proposition that in a way appealed to me. You said you could get from Tilly Lancey a number of letters with which she has threatened me, and also that you could do it in such a way as to have it publicly appear that my political opponent, Arthur Gordon, had been trying to buy them and was secretly an intimate friend of that woman.”
“Well, come to the point,” said Deland. “We admit all that.”
“Good enough,” thought Nick, calmly taking it all in. “That admission will cost you something, Deland, and may save him. I’ll wait and see which way the cat jumps.”
“I apprehended defeat in the coming election,” Madison went on deliberately. “For that reason, only, your proposition appealed to me. I foresaw that I could, with those letters restored to me and Gordon in a measure defamed, easily carry the election. I asked you what you would accept for doing the job?
“And you agreed to pay it, ten thousand dollars, and told us to go ahead,” said Deland.
“True,” Madison darkly nodded. “But I did not agree to bloodshed. You did not tell me that a murder was to be committed. You did not even hint that Tilly Lancey’s life was to be taken. Not for a moment, you double-dyed knave, would I have considered that hideous proposition. You said——”
“Never mind what we said,” Deland cut in sharply. “We know what we said and to what you agreed. We have our own way of doing things, and we have delivered the goods. It now is up to you to settle. We have put Gordon in wrong. I have your letters in my pocket. You’re going to settle, too, or——”
“Stop right there, Deland,” Madison interrupted, leaning forward to bang the desk with his fist. “There will be no settlement between you fellows and me. As I told Cora Cavendish two hours ago, you will not get a copper from me.”
“We won’t, eh?”
Deland’s hand went to his hip pocket.
“Not one copper!” Madison thundered. “You say I have only one of two courses. I say, however, that I have a third course, and that’s the course I will take. There is only one way for me to settle this infamous business, and that was shown me by this man on the floor. I will confess the truth, take my medicine for what I have done, and accomplish one other thing—that of sending you miscreants to the fate you deserve! That’s the way I’ll settle with you—and the only way![Pg 37]”
It would be hard to say what might have followed, but for one startling and utterly unexpected incident.
Nick Carter sat straight up on the floor and shouted:
“Good for you, Madison! Stick to that and I’ll pull you out! Against any man but Gordon—I’d give you my vote!”
Nick had more than one reason for this sudden outbreak. From where he was lying on the floor, he could see through the alcove and into the dimly lighted conservatory.
He could see Chick Carter and Patsy Garvan crouching there, each with revolvers drawn.
Their timely arrival was not due to anything extraordinary. Patsy had trailed Cora Cavendish to an East Side saloon, and had seen her meet Flynn and give him Deland’s instructions. Patsy then had followed Flynn, and later Daggett and Tobey, learning positively in the meantime that they were to join Deland in Madison’s residence. Seizing an opportunity to telephone home, also, Patsy found that Chick had returned, and quick arrangements were made to meet on the Madison place. They had done so just in time to see the three crooks enter the conservatory—whither they soon stealthily followed them.
Before Nick’s ringing words were fairly uttered, Deland and the three gangsters were on their feet and reaching for their weapons.
“That door!” snapped Deland, pointing to the alcove. “Close and lock it, Daggett. Pull down that curtain, Tobey, down to the sill. Not settle, eh? We’ll settle the hash of both, then, before——”
“You’re already too late!” Nick shouted.
He would have added a word or two, but they would have been lost in the tumult that then began.
Both Flynn and Daggett had started into the alcove to obey Deland’s instructions, and each had been met with a crashing blow from Chick and Patsy, dealt with precision and violence that sent both of them headlong to the floor.
Before either could rise, both detectives were in the room and had them covered, while a third revolver caused Tobey to turn from the window and throw up his hands.
Deland had been the first to realize the actual situation, and like a flash he had darted toward the hall.
Chick saw him as the rascal passed through the door.
“After him, Patsy!” he yelled, with a directing glance. “I can handle these three.”
Patsy turned and darted into the hall.
As he came through the doorway, the crash of Deland’s revolver drowned all other sounds.
The bullet splintered the door casing over Patsy’s head.
Bang!
Another ball whizzed by Patsy’s head.
The hall was only dimly lighted by the rays that came from the lamp in the side hall, and for an instant Patsy could not see his quarry. The flash from his revolver on the second shot revealed him.
Deland was darting up the main stairway, not daring to wait to open a door, and evidently bent upon reaching the veranda roof and thence making his escape.
Patsy now saw him plainly, and that he again was about to fire, and he dropped like a flash to his knees. He was not quite quick enough, however.
Bang! went the weapon, and the bullet tore through the flesh on Patsy’s left shoulder.
He felt the sting and the gush of hot blood. He was[Pg 38] up on the instant, revolver leveled, and was pumping lead up the stairway with the rapidity of a gatling gun.
The report of the weapon was mingled with another sound—the crash of a body at Patsy’s feet.
Deland had pitched sideways over the baluster rail—with four bullets in his breast. He was stone dead before he struck the hall floor.
Patsy Garvan had closed the eternal door on the most vicious crook then at large.
All that remains to be told of the strange and stirring case may be told with few and simple words. The three crooks, and subsequently Cora Cavendish, were arrested, and later received life sentences for complicity in the murder of Tilly Lancey. They made no fight against the evidence Nick Carter had obtained.
It also appeared that the crime had been framed up by Cora and Deland, as Nick had suspected, and that not only they, but also Flynn and Daggett were in the flat when Gordon visited the woman. Nick’s suspicions and deductions had, in fact, been correct from the start.
John Madison confessed his part in the affair to the court, and Nick’s intervention in his behalf resulted in his discharge from custody. He was ignominiously defeated in the election, however, and he moved West with his family the following month.
Arthur Gordon was elected with flying colors, and—well, it would be vain to attempt to describe his gratitude for Nick Carter and his assistants. There are sentiments that language cannot express.
Mortimer Deland was buried, his true name and history with him, save his criminal history, on the day after he was shot.
THE END.
“A Human Counterfeit; or, Nick Carter and the Crook’s Double,” will be the title of the long, complete story you will find in the next issue, No. 157, of the Nick Carter Stories, out September 11th. There is an unusually baffling mystery in this story that requires all of the cleverness of the great detective to solve. You will also find the usual installment of the serial now running, together with several other interesting articles.
THE DULL BOY SCORED.
“Now, my sharp lads!” exclaimed the schoolmaster, “answer me this little riddle and there’s a holiday for the one who does it: Supposing a gentle little donkey was tied to a tree with a rope eight yards long, and a truss of hay was inviting his appetite at a distance of nine yards, how could he get at it without breaking or gnawing the rope?”
The hay, the donkey, and the difficulty were mentally seen, but not the answer to the ancient conundrum.
“All give it up?” asked the master.
“Yes, sir,” was answered in a chorus of disappointment.
Then the schoolmaster, naturally, exclaimed:
“So did the other little donkey, my lads.”
“Please, sir, the other day you said I was a dull boy, but may I answer?” asked a very little fellow, with a sly look.
“Certainly, Arthur; but you must be quick,” decided the man of knowledge.
“Well, then, sir,” the juvenile declared, “when he’d gone[Pg 39] eight yards, he’d be sure to reach the hay by keeping on four feet, and he’d have a foot over as well as his nose.”
Then the master bent over his desk without a leg to stand on.