“Good God, Mose, what brings you here?” he hoarsely demanded.
“I’ll soon tell you, have no doubt of that,” rejoined Nick, with threatening significance.
While he spoke he drew a chair to the opposite side of the table, so placing it that the light from the window should not fall upon his face and possibly reveal his deception.
Then he sat down, fixed his frowning eyes upon the face of the cringing young man opposite, and said sternly, still cleverly imitating Flood’s resonant voice:
“Well, what have you done with it?”
Royal caught his breath, gripped hard at the arms of his chair for a moment, then answered, in tones of intense amazement:
“Done with what, Mose?”
“The money.”
“What money?”
“A fine question!” sneered Nick, with a terrible display of suppressed passion. “What money, indeed! The money of which you robbed Cecil Kendall, after beating out his brains under the windows of your own home.”
Royal was as white as a corpse, yet by a mighty effort of will he governed his agitation, and found voice with which to reply.
“You are mad, Mose—stark mad!” he cried hoarsely. “I did nothing of the kind.”
“You lie!” hissed Nick ferociously. “I saw you out there. I saw you do it—or just after you had done it. Don’t lie to me, Royal. You may blind others with a lie, perhaps, but you can’t blind me. I say I saw you do it, or at least saw you just after you did it.”
A look of utter despair had settled on Royal’s bloodless face, and he was trembling from head to foot. Yet in his staring eyes there was a look of misery and mute appeal that words could not describe.
“On my word you are wrong, Mose, utterly wrong!” he cried piteously. “I did not do it. I have not got the money.”
“You have! I say I saw you!”
“You did not see me do it. You did not see me kill him, for I did not do it.”
“I saw you out there,” reiterated Nick, with augmented vehemence. “If you deny the truth to me, that I saw you out there last night, I’ll throttle you where you sit.”
Royal breathed hard and heavy, as if he already felt a hand at his throat. His staring eyes appeared held by Nick’s intense gaze, and the latter’s stern and threatening face awed and terrified him. For thirty seconds he hesitated, then faltered brokenly, like a man whose abject fear drove him to admit the truth.
“Well—God help me, Mose, what shall I do? I—I confess that I was out there, Mose; but, on my oath, I did not kill Kendall. I swear to Heaven, Mose, I did not.”
Nick felt a thrill of satisfaction. He had scored one important point and verified one of his suspicions—that Royal had gone to Fordham after leaving the faro-bank, despite having denied it to Chick.
Nick now let up a little on his terror-filled victim. Yet, without betraying his secret satisfaction, he sternly replied:
“You say you did not kill him, but I have only your word for it.”
“My oath, Mose!”
“Silence! Silence, and hear me!”
“I am listening, Mose. For God’s sake, don’t be so harsh. I have trouble enough, Heaven knows. I am a wreck of myself and know not where to turn. I am listening, Mose.”
Nick rather pitied the misguided fellow, yet his pity did not deter him from playing his shrewd game to a finish. He leaned nearer over the table, saying with unabated severity:
“Hark you, then! You’ve not forgotten your threats made in my place last night. I heard them, and knew of what a drunken fool is capable. So I hastened out to Fordham to head you off from any crime. God forgive me, I arrived too late. I arrived only to see you——”
“You did not see me do it, Mose, so help me Heaven!” Royal hoarsely interrupted.
“I saw enough,” cried Nick, with terrible significance. “Miserable young man that you are, you have left me but one course. Don’t you see what I am doing? Don’t you see where I stand?”
“Where you stand?” echoed Royal, white and staring.
“Have you no brains?” continued Nick, with augmented feeling. “You know that I revere your father, that I love your sister. Don’t you see, misguided boy, that, for their sake, to spare them the awful shame and sorrow of beholding you a criminal, I have taken your guilt on my own shoulders? Don’t you see it, blind man, that for the sake of their peace and happiness, not for yours, I am inviting suspicion and taking even the hazard of the electric chair?”
Nick Carter, incomparably shrewd in his discernment and deductions, was indeed impersonating Moses Flood to the very letter. That the motives just expressed were the real motives actuating Moses Flood in his recent conduct, Nick had not a doubt.
For a moment Royal stared at him like one who could not speak. Then the meaning of what he had heard, and the overwhelming self-sacrifice so vividly pictured, seemed to dawn upon him with full force. It did even more, just as Nick had expected. It brought to the lips of the unhappy young man the words of gratitude and the much more important disclosure of the whole truth, which Nick Carter from the first had but aimed to evoke.
With countenance changing, with eyes lighting perceptibly, Royal presently said, more calmly:
“Can I believe my ears? Do you mean, Moses Flood, that you had no hand in that crime, and that your present conduct is inspired by the sentiments you have expressed?”
“I never speak idly, boy,” cried Nick impressively.
“Then, God hearing me, my father and sister owe you a debt of gratitude that words cannot repay,” declared Royal fervently. “I will not speak of my own feelings, save to repeat that you are wrong, absolutely wrong; for I am ignorant as you concerning who killed Cecil Kendall.”
Nick believed him, yet he grimly shook his head.
“You still doubt me,” cried Royal quickly, now eager to explain and set himself right. “Wait a moment, Mose. I don’t deny that you have grounds for suspicion, after the threats I made and what you may have seen at the rectory. But let me explain.”
“I am listening.”
“My threats were but foolish ravings, Mose, on my word, I had no intention of executing them, but I determined to have what I thought was my part of Kendall’s winnings.”
“Well, what did you do about it?”
“After leaving your place, Mose, I did go to Fordham,” said Royal, with nervous haste. “I knew that Kendall had an appointment with my sister, and I expected to find him at the rectory. The journey out there in the fresh night air, however, served to cool my blood and bring me to my senses. On entering the rectory grounds I realized that I was in no condition to meet my father, from whom I have concealed the wild and foolish habits into which I have lately fallen. As true as Heaven, Mose, I am done with them from this hour.”
“What did you do out there?” demanded Nick, with feigned incredulity. “Come to that.”
“Instead of entering the house,” Royal hastened to reply, with increased earnestness, “I went to look through the library windows, to see if Kendall was in the house.”
“And then?”
“Then,” echoed Royal, with a gasp and shudder, “then I stumbled on Kendall’s dead body, not ten feet away from the library window. My God, Mose, you cannot imagine my horror and my dreadful alarm. The desperate threats I had made in your place suddenly recurred to me. I saw myself under arrest for the crime. I was like a man in a hideous nightmare, and I did only what men do in such a frenzy of terror and dismay.”
“What was that?”
“I fled like a madman from the spot and returned to the city. Avoiding observation, Mose, and stealing into this house by one of the side doors, I came here to my room. I have not since been out of it. I have not dared to go out. I have been waiting here, in abject fear and trembling, for the worst that may come. I know I am a coward Mose—a cur and a coward; but, so help me God, I have told you the whole truth!”
“I believe you, Royal,” said Nick. “But you have overlooked one very important fact.”
Royal started at the change of tone, and again grew deathly pale.
“What fact, Mose?” he faintly gasped.
“You have confessed yourself, not to Moses Flood, but to Nick Carter, the detective.”
And Nick grimly removed his heavy beard while he spoke, and rose abruptly to his feet.
For the bare fraction of a second Harry Royal hung fire under his sudden stress of alarm and excitement. He sat like a man momentarily dazed, with his hueless features drawn and twitching convulsively, and his wild eyes half starting from his head.
Then with a half-smothered scream of dismay he ripped open the table drawer at which he sat and snatched out a revolver.
Before Nick fairly realized it, so rapid and quick was the move, he found himself with the weapon leveled pointblank at his head.
CHAPTER XIII.
NICK CALLS THE TURN.
“You throw up your hands, Carter, and listen to me!”
This was the command that came from Harry Royal as he leveled his revolver at the detective’s head.
Nick promptly obeyed.
The shrewd detective, however, was laughing in his sleeve. He had learned from long experience that there is little to be feared from a man who pulls a gun and does not instantly fire. In nine cases out of ten the act is only a bluff.
“I’ll not be arrested, Carter, I’ve made up my mind to that,” Royal hoarsely cried. “Death is preferable to the disgrace and horror of a prison cell. I don’t intend to harm you, but I swear I’ll shoot myself if you attempt to arrest me.”
Nick was smiling now.
“You evidently take me for a foe, Royal,” said he genially. “Instead, my boy, I am as good a friend as you have in the world. Put up that toy, Royal, and prepare to go with me.”
“Not——”
“Oh, no, not to the Tombs,” interrupted Nick heartily. “I know that you are innocent of any crime, and I am here only to serve you to the best advantage, as well as others who are dear to you. I want you to go to my residence with me, and for the present remain concealed there.”
“For what reason?” demanded Royal, struck with surprise and gradually dropping his weapon.
“Oh, I cannot delay to explain,” laughed Nick, in friendly fashion. “I’ll do so later, however. What I most fear, just now, Royal, is that Detective Gerry, of the central office, may show up here at any moment. Take my word for it, my boy, he’ll land you in the Tombs in short order, and that’s what I wish to prevent.”
“Do you mean this, Carter, that you are really my friend?”
“Try me and see,” laughed Nick. “They who know me well will tell you that I never lie like this.”
Royal sprang to his feet and held out his hand.
“I’ll take your word for it,” he impulsively cried, with his boyish countenance fairly transfigured.
“Good for you,” nodded Nick, shaking him warmly by the hand. “You’ll never regret it.”
“I will go with you when and where you please.”
“Good again.”
“Yet I’m infernally mystified——”
“Oh, I’ll explain all a little later, my boy.”
“Then we’ll dust from here at once, sir, for Gerry——”
“Stop a bit,” said Nick. “Not too fast. I wish it to appear that you have fled, as you very likely would have done if you were guilty of Kendall’s murder. No, no, don’t stop to question me. I’ll make it clear enough to you by and by.”
“Very well, sir,” cried Royal, now glad enough to comply. “You just tell me what to do, Detective Carter, and I’ll do it.”
“First put things in shape here, as if you had hurriedly departed,” said Nick. “It will be very easy for Gerry and the police to assume that you had some hand in the crime, and that you have now jumped the country. I’ll loan you this disguise, that you may not be recognized as we go out, and then we’ll make a bee-line for my residence. Once there, my boy, we may discuss the situation without fear of intruders. Come, come, look lively. The sooner we are away, lad, the better.”
Not much time was required for preparing the indications of hurried flight which Nick wished the room to present, and at the end of a quarter of an hour the two men left the Carleton Chambers building, Royal in the disguise with which Nick had provided him, and together they at once proceeded to the detective’s residence.
Upon entering his office with Royal, Nick met with a slight surprise, not entirely unexpected, yet not anticipated quite so soon.
With a significant wink, Chick received him with the remark:
“There’s a man in the library, Nick, waiting to see you.”
Nick took the cue given him, saying inquiringly:
“Not——”
“Exactly!”
With a smile of genuine satisfaction, Nick turned to Royal and said:
“Take off that disguise, my boy, and conceal yourself back of yonder door.”
“For what, sir?” asked Royal, perplexed and surprised.
“I expect something to be said here that I wish you to overhear.”
“Very well, then.”
“Not a word, mind you, nor a move of any kind, until I give you permission.”
“Trust me, sir, I’ll be silent.”
“Conceal yourself at once, then,” said Nick. “Now, Chick, bring in the caller.”
Chick departed to the library, returning at the end of a minute.
He was accompanied by—Moses Flood.
Nick had discarded his black coat, having put on an office jacket, and he was found seated at his desk.
“Ah, Moses, how are you?” said he, looking up with an innocent smile when the noted gambler entered.
Flood was as carefully dressed as usual, and appeared remarkably dignified and composed. Yet his face was very pale and his mouth noticeably firm.
“Fairly well, Nick,” he gravely replied, accepting the chair to which Nick graciously waved him. “I am glad you have returned. I have been waiting to see you.”
“Waiting long, Mose?”
“About ten minutes. No, don’t go, Chick. My business is not private. I prefer, in fact, that you also should hear what I have to say.”
“All right, Mose,” laughed Chick, taking a chair. “Just as you wish.”
“What can I do for you, Flood?” inquired Nick.
The gambler cleared his throat before he replied, then said, with grave feeling:
“To begin with, Nick, despite that our vocations in life have been decidedly opposed, and mine not one to be proud of, we have never had any conflict that I can recall, and I feel rather justified in saying that we are fairly good friends.”
“Quite so, I’m sure,” said Nick simply.
“Well, I wish to state, Nick, that I have played my last card. Whatever the morrow has in store for me, whether good or ill, fortune or misfortune, I never again will gamble in any way as long as I live. I am done with it forever.”
Nick promptly extended his hand and took that of the speaker, giving it a grip that made Flood wince.
“I’m a thousand times more than glad to hear you say this, Mose,” he cried; “and I know that your word, when you give it thus, is as good as any government bond. I’m rejoiced to be the first to take your hand upon it; and, as far as friendship goes, Mose, you have no better friend in the world than Nick Carter.”
Flood’s outward composure, which was absolutely marvelous at times, remained as marked as when he sat dealing cards which made him nearly a hundred thousand dollars loser, for the sake of a girl’s happiness whose hand had been denied him, and to whose love he believed he had no earthly hope.
“I believe you, Nick,” said he gravely. “And I thank you.”
“Such a man as you, Mose, can make his mark in any path in life, and a brilliant mark, too,” added Nick. “I see a grand future for you now, and I say heartily, God speed it.”
Flood shrugged his broad shoulders and smiled faintly.
“Don’t be too sure of the future, Nick,” said he. “At all events, however, free me from one thought.”
“Namely?”
“That I am led to this renunciation of my business by any fear or thought of the future,” said Flood, with profound feeling. “Now, Nick, having declared my better resolutions, I will come to the chief point and tell you why I am here.”
“I am all attention.”
“I presume you have heard the news, Nick?”
“You refer to that murder out in Fordham?”
“Precisely.”
“Yes, Mose, I have heard of it.”
“Well, Nick, I have come here to give myself into custody,” said Flood, with unaltered quietude. “You being a good friend, and a man I have always admired, I preferred to have you take me in rather than one of those infernally meddlesome sleuths of the central office. Nick, I yield myself your prisoner.”
To say that Chick Carter was startled and surprised is putting it tamely.
Nick, however, was not in the least surprised. He had, with extraordinary shrewdness, and for reasons presently to appear, expected nothing less.
“My prisoner, eh?” said he, smiling, with a curious twinkle in his eye. “For what, Mose?”
“For the murder of Cecil Kendall,” said Flood quietly. “I confess to having committed the crime, Nick, and you may run me in as soon as you please. The sooner the better.”
Nick sat back in his chair, elevated his heels to the edge of his desk, then said complacently, still oddly smiling:
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Flood, but I really cannot accept your magnanimous offer.”
“Not accept it!”
“No, Mose.”
“Why not?”
“Because, Mose,” laughed Nick, “my reputation as a detective is involved. When I run a man in for committing a crime I always make it a point to run in—the right man!”
Flood half started from his chair, then controlled himself with a violent mental effort.
“What do you mean by that, Nick?” he demanded, frowning darkly.
“Just what I say, Mose.”
“You think I am not the right man?”
“I know you are not.”
“But my confession——”
“Your confession has no weight with me, Mose,” interrupted Nick decidedly.
“No weight! Why not?”
“Because you are making it to shield another.”
“Another?”
“Harry Royal.”
“Why do you say this?”
“Because you are in love with his sister, Mose, and you went to Fordham last evening to see her,” cried Nick. “Instead, you saw Harry Royal near Kendall’s dead body, and you now believe that he committed the murder. So you are taking his supposed crime upon your own shoulders, for the sake of Medora Royal and her father, with even greater sacrifice than when you purposely dealt cards which made you a loser to the amount of ninety thousand dollars, to set Kendall on his feet, merely because you thought Dora Royal loved him.”
Before this was half uttered Moses Flood was upon his feet, as white as the collar at his pulsing throat and with eyes burning like living fire.
“Are you man or devil, Nick Carter, that you know these things?” he cried, with lips convulsively twitching.
Nick laughed aloud.
“Man, Mose,” he replied; “and I’m sometimes known by the name of—Badger.”
Flood drew back with a start.
“Badger—you’re not Joe Badger!”
“Rather!”
“Whom I saw this morning?”
“None other.”
“Who was at my place last night?”
“Precisely.”
“Oh, my God, I see it all now!”
“Steady, Mose!” cried Nick. “Not too fast. Not quite all. You fail to see what you yourself have once declared—that it was not in young Royal to have killed his friend.”
Flood caught his breath as he comprehended the significance of the last remark, and he sprang toward Nick like a man electrified.
“You don’t mean—you don’t mean, Nick, that he is guiltless?” he cried, as if in a frenzy of suspense.
“Exactly.”
“Can you prove it? Can you prove it? I’ll give you my fortune, Nick, if you can prove that.”
“We shall see.”
“But——”
“Come forth there, from behind the door,” shouted Nick.
And Harry Royal, deeply moved by what he had heard, with tears in his eyes and sobs shaking him, strode out from his concealment.
Flood reeled a little, staring, gasping for breath, then raised his hands and pointed to the young man he had so unselfishly served.
“But I saw him—I saw him above the body!” he cried wildly.
“I discovered it only by chance, Mose, on my word.”
“But the satchel—you had in your hand the satchel with the money——”
“No, no, on my life, no!” screamed Royal. “It was my own, the satchel I had brought from Boston. I had it when I left your house. I know no more than you of the killing of Cecil Kendall.”
Flood threw back his head with a cry of relief too great for words, and Nick Carter laughed deeply and sprang up to grasp him by the hand.
“You are one man in ten million, Mose, who would thus lay down his life for the love of another,” he cried warmly. “Calm yourself, old chap. I told you I was a friend on whom you could rely.”
Flood gazed at him with glistening eyes.
“Before Heaven, Nick, I owe you a debt I can never repay,” said he, with much emotion.
“Pshaw,” laughed Nick heartily. “As you men say who writhe under the tiger’s claws, as you lately have been writhing, Mose, I have merely called the turn for you. Run you in, eh? No, no, my man, not I. When I make a move of that kind I want the right man. To get the bracelets on him—that’s the work that still lies before me. It may prove to be the most difficult and dangerous of all. The relations of you two men—humph! the adjustment of them was easy.”
Even thus indifferently could the great detective regard the clever work by which he had verified many of his suspicions through bringing these two men together.
The explanations that presently followed served to greatly clear the situation, despite that they offered no clue to Kendall’s assassin.
Harry Royal’s story, as previously told to Nick, was entirely true.
As regarded Flood, it appeared that he had driven to Fordham in a buggy, in the body of which he had placed his cane. Wishing to secretly have a last interview with Dora Royal, he had hitched his team at the rear gate, then crossed the rectory grounds to try to see her. As he approached the house, however, he saw Royal by the light from the library windows, crouching above the body of Kendall, who must have been slain but a brief time before.
Before Flood could accost him, Royal leaped up and fled at the top of his speed. After the threats the latter had made, Flood felt sure he had committed the murder. Overwhelmed by the discovery, he had at once driven back to town and put up his team, entirely forgetting the cane which he had when starting out.
During the night he resolved upon the magnanimous course he would adopt, just as Nick had suspected. Next morning, however, when confronted by Badger, he discovered that the latter knew far too much and must be silenced. Hence the interruption of Gerry during their interview led Flood to escape by a secret door, with the intention of afterward seeking Badger, to buy his silence. Not knowing where to find him, however, Flood finally decided to clinch matters by giving himself up to Nick Carter and flatly asserting that he had committed the crime.
While simple enough in a way, Nick’s deductions from the conflicting circumstances were exceedingly clever. The passionate indignation of Flood, when Nick intimated that Royal might be the guilty party, at once convinced the detective that that was Flood’s own opinion. Nick instantly decided, therefore, that Flood must have been at Fordham that night, and very likely had seen Royal in some incriminating situation.
Believing that Royal would lie about the matter if questioned by a detective, Nick decided that he could learn the exact truth by personating Flood for that purpose. Hence the curious and effective ruse he had adopted.
Such, in brief, were the explanations which greatly cleared matters, and the gratitude of Royal for the heroic part assumed by Moses Flood may be easily imagined.
Added to this, moreover, when Nick quietly disclosed to Flood the true sentiments of Medora Royal, and the misleading statement made by her father, along with the probability that the past would be forgiven and Flood’s suit favorably considered, the situation, at least in so far as Flood was concerned, became changed indeed.
“But,” Nick emphatically declared a little later, “there is one fact not to be ignored. The murderer of Kendall still is at large, and he must be found.”
“I should say so,” cried Chick. “By Jove! I don’t see that we are any nearer that than at the outset.”
“Possibly not,” admitted Nick, smiling oddly. “But I have an idea that we shall finally land him.”
“Have you any suspicion, Carter, or formed any plans?” inquired Flood, with countenance evincing the happiness Nick had brought him.
Nick looked a bit grim and threatening when he replied.
“Suspicions, no,” said he. “Plans, yes.”
“Namely?” inquired Chick.
“This work is for you and me alone, Chick,” said Nick decidedly. “For the present, both Flood and Harry Royal must remain concealed here.”
“What’s that for?”
“I wish to have it appear that they have fled, as if both of them were parties to the murder. This will serve us in two ways.”
“How so?”
“First, it will set Gerry and the police on a wild-goose chase, and leave the way open to our work and investigations.”
“That’s true, Nick,” nodded Chick. “A good scheme, too.”
“Second,” added Nick, “it will tend to relieve the real criminal of immediate apprehensions, and convince him that he is not suspected. That will make his detection all the easier for us.”
“No doubt of it, Nick.”
“Now draw up your chairs, all of you, and I will outline my plans. The most important work, and undoubtedly the most hazardous, still remains to be done.”
CHAPTER XIV.
TWO BAD EGGS.
Nearly a month passed before the scheme devised by Nick Carter, by which to run down Cecil Kendall’s murderer, was productive of any startling results.
Yet the month was not without incidents worthy of note.
The chief mystery was the disappearance of Moses Flood and Harry Royal. The wiseacres of the central office promptly declared them the murderers, also that they had fled to escape arrest, but neither detectives nor police were able to locate them.
Nick had, however, quietly relieved the minds of Royal’s father and sister, confiding to them his secret, and insuring their silence and discretion.
Flood’s gambling-house, when his prolonged absence seemed probable, was at once taken possession of by his former lookout, Nathan Godard, by whom it was run as usual for a fortnight.
During that time Nick quietly learned several facts. He discovered that Godard had long occupied the adjoining house, where he dwelt with his niece, Belle Braddon, and a housekeeper. He learned, moreover, that Godard was a greedy and unprincipled fellow, a ruffian when in liquor, and a man generally disliked and distrusted.
Added to this Nick learned one very pertinent fact—that Godard had left the faro-bank immediately after Kendall had made his big winnings, and that he did not return for more than an hour.
This was a very important point, for Nick had reasoned that the crime must have been committed by some person who knew that Kendall had won the money. As the crime was committed within an hour afterward, moreover, it obviously appeared to be the work of some person who had seen the money won.
Nick put two and two together, and decided that Nate Godard was the man he wanted. To fix the murder upon him, however, was not an easy task.
Keeping his suspicions and movements well concealed, however, Nick went at it by beginning secretly to persecute Godard, worrying him as a cat worries a mouse.
At the end of two weeks he had the gambling-house raided by the police, the furniture seized and removed, and the house closed up.
Five days later he learned that Godard was secretly dealing a faro-game in his own house, to which only a few of his intimate and trusty friends were admitted.
Nick gave the police a tip, and the place was successfully raided the next night, and all the paraphernalia seized and confiscated.
Godard’s feelings over these several episodes, as well as those of his niece, Belle Braddon, appeared in their talk at breakfast the following morning.
“I’m cursed if I can understand it,” snarled Godard, across the table. “Twice in two weeks I have been raided, involving the loss of several hundreds of dollars. Worse even than that, the devil take it, my game has been going behind at an alarming rate. Bad luck of the worst kind appears to have struck me.”
Godard’s face was flushed, grim, and ugly, and his voice by no means clear. That he had been drinking was obvious, as had been more than usually noticeable for nearly a month. He had the look of a man with a mental burden not easily carried, and secret apprehensions not pleasant to endure.
The girl across the table, far more attractive, yet not less evil than he, shrugged her shapely shoulders and indulged in a low ripple of laughter.
“You’re only getting what’s coming to you, Nate,” she glibly replied.
“What do you mean by that, Belle?”
“You’d no business to turn such a trick as you turned. It was too long a chance.”
“Silence! Silence, I say!” Godard quickly snarled, with an uglier frown. “What need to speak of that?”
“Bah! there’s none here to be feared.”
“Mebbe not, but I’ll not have it talked about,” declared Godard. “You’ve got your share of the blunt, all you deserve, and the least you can do is to keep your mouth closed.”
“It’s closed all right, Nate, when there’s any danger about,” retorted Belle pointedly. “Have no fear of me. I’ll never give you away. But such tricks as that always bring bad luck, Nate.”
“Not always,” growled Godard, less sullenly. “What I can’t understand is why the police have made such a mark of me.”
“That so?”
“To raid me twice within a week—that’s pressing things over the limit. It’s not usual with the infernal bluebottles, and I’m cursed if I can fathom it.”
“Can’t you guess who has tipped them to do it?” inquired Belle.
“Of course I can’t,” cried Godard. “If I could I would put an end to these persecutions, even if I had to turn him down to end them.”
“Put out his light, eh?”
“Yes, I would!”
“And you can’t guess who?”
“No! I wish I could.”
“Well, I can, Nate,” declared Belle, with an unpleasant smile.
“Who?” demanded Godard, with interest.
“The same man who had me fired out of my job.”
“Not Nick Carter?” cried Godard, with a start.
“That’s who, Nate.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I do.”
“For what reason?”
“Because, Nate, he either has some personal grudge against you and me, or else he suspects——”
The girl stopped, yet stared significantly at her hearer.
Godard dropped his spoon and began to grow pale. Yet the frown of his beetling brows became darker, and the light uglier in his evil eyes. He muttered an oath after a moment, then added, through his teeth:
“If I thought that——”
“What would you do?” queried Belle, with sinister significance.
“What wouldn’t I do,” snarled Godard, with sullen ferocity. “I’d do anything that would insure wiping him out of my path.”
The girl laughed, a coldly, cruel laugh that contrasted vividly with the man’s harsh voice.
“Nick Carter is not an easy man to wipe out,” she replied.
“I know that as well as you, Belle.”
“You’d do anything to accomplish it, eh?”
“That’s what I would,” cried Godard decisively. “The play would be limited to two persons, Belle, if what you think is true. It would be him or me, and I’m cursed if I’d have it me if I could help it. Why do you think of him?”
The girl dried her lips and tossed aside her napkin.
“Because I don’t fancy the way things are going any better than you do, Nate,” she replied bitterly. “It was Carter who threw me out of my job at the bank, for which he could have had no earthly reason, barring that he suspected me of having worked Kendall for a fish and lured him where you could shove him into a corner. Carter doesn’t like me for a cent, and maybe he likes you none the less for being my uncle. Possibly he suspects you because of it.”
“But he can have no evidence——”
“Bah! No man ever knows what evidence Nick Carter possesses,” Belle curtly interrupted. “When he gets after a covey, about the first the poor devil knows of it, Nate, he is down and out for keeps, with bangles on his wrists or a hemp tie in place of a silk one. Don’t bank on what Nick Carter doesn’t know. If you are up against him, and any reason exists for his being after you, there’s but one safe course—and even that is a long chance against such a man as he is.”
“What course is that?”
“Take the bull by the horns, Nate, and either put the detective to sleep or go under yourself in the attempt. That’s the only way to deal with Nick Carter.”
Godard sat silent for several moments, weighing in his own mind the desperate possibility suggested. He could not believe that he was suspected of the crime for which the detectives and the police were searching the country after Moses Flood and Harry Royal, yet the words of his niece had alarmed him, and opened his eyes to the bare possibility of a frightful peril.
Presently he roused himself, and stared across at the girl.
“What would you do about it?” he sullenly asked.
“Just what I have said,” replied Belle bluntly.
“Try to turn him down?”
“Yes.”
“If I was sure that he had any designs against me——”
“Faugh!” interrupted the girl. “There are facts you shouldn’t lose sight of, Nate. In the beginning he was on this case in Gilsey’s employ. Do you imagine Gilsey has let him drop it? Not by a long chalk.”
“Well, what of that?”
“This is it,” cried Belle, who was rather a clever logician. “Is Carter making any attempt to round up Flood or that fool of a Royal? Not one, my word for it. He’s letting the central office screws scurry their legs off on that scent. None of that for Nick Carter, mind you. What’s the natural conclusion, eh? Merely this—Carter doesn’t suspect Flood, despite the evidence. Yet if he is still on the case, he must suspect somebody, and that somebody may be—the right man!”
Godard’s evil face grew darker with every word that had fallen from the girl’s lips.
“The devil!” he snarled, as she pointedly concluded. “I hadn’t thought of it in that way. By Heaven, it may be true, as you say.”
“I should proceed as if it was, Nate, if I were you.”
“Try to land him?”
“Precisely.”
“How can it be done?”
“That’s for you to determine.”
“I don’t fancy the job.”
“Not as well as knocking out a half drunken fellow with ninety thousand dollars in his kit, eh?” laughed Belle Braddon. “I say, Nate, what would there be in it for me if I could do the job for you?”
“Turn Carter down?”
“Yes.”
“You mean—put out his light?”
“Exactly.”
“Your own price,” cried Godard eagerly.
“Five thousand?”
“Yes.”
“In cold cash?”
“The very day it is done.”
“That’s good enough for me,” returned Belle, with a gleeful shrug of her shoulders. “I can use the dust all right, Nate, and I’ve thought of a way by which I can do the job.”
“Or get done yourself in attempting it.”
“Oh, you let me alone to look out for myself,” sneered Belle, with a series of significant nods. “I cut my eye-teeth a long time ago, and it’s a cold day when I cannot hoodwink a man.”
“That’s no pipe-dream,” growled Godard.
“And I’ll do the job for the price mentioned, Nate—cash on delivery,” added the unprincipled jade. “I must do it at my own time and in my own way.”