Under the Tiger's Claws; Or, A Struggle for the Right

A careful examination of the place required but a little time.

On two sides were the bare brick walls of the passage, reaching from the floor to the ceiling.

At each end was the inner surface of a heavy iron door, which was as tightly closed as that of a steel safe. Under all the pressure Nick possibly could bring to bear upon them they were not even jarred.

“Um! There’s no opening them by force, that’s sure!” he presently decided. “Sheet-iron, too, over stout wood, no doubt, and securely riveted. To break through them is also out of the question.

“Whew! It’s getting close in here already. I shall need fresh air before long.”

The ceiling was two feet above his head, and brief study convinced Nick that nothing could be done in that direction.

Next he sounded the walls and doors with the butt of his revolver. Each appeared to be solid, infernally solid, and Nick then fell to his knees upon the bare floor.

“It’s the only way,” he muttered decisively. “I must get through this floor in some way. It must be done quickly, too, or I may become weak for want of better air.”

Upon his hands and knees Nick carefully examined the floor.

It consisted of spruce boards, six inches wide, in most of which there was no break. Presently, however, he discovered a crack where the ends of two of the boards met.

“Aha! this is better!” he muttered.

With his knife he dug out the wood around the nails securing the longer of the two boards, and succeeded in slightly prying up the end of it.

There was another board beneath it.

With countenance grown more grim and determined, Nick rose to his feet and drew his revolver.

“It’s a long chance,” he growled, under his breath. “The smoke will make it closer than ever in here, but I must know what’s under these boards.”

He aimed down at a spot a few inches from the end of the one he had started, then fired.

The report almost deafened him, and a cloud of smoke immediately filled the place.

The bullet tore through the floor, splitting the end of the upper board, then plowed its way down through the frescoed ceiling of the room below.

Nick dropped to his knees again, and peered down through the hole left by the chunk of lead.

As he did so a breath of fresh air filled his nostrils, and he could discern daylight below.

“Eureka! I’m over one of the rooms!” he cried to himself. “I’ll fool that sly jade yet—and that isn’t all I will do for her!”

Nick now went to work with a will. With his knife he pried up the splintered end of the board until he could get his fingers under it. Then he ripped up a section of it, as if it had been so much cardboard.

To remove the remaining pieces of the upper board required about five minutes, and Nick then tackled the one below it.

First, he fired a second bullet, making a hole a few inches from the former. With his knife he then hacked out the wood between the two holes, thus enabling him to get a good grip upon the board. With his boot heel, and at times with the butt of his revolver, he split the plank in several places, and at the end of fifteen minutes he had the lower board ripped out.

Though reeking from every pore, Nick at once thrust his leg through the aperture and down between the beams, and with his heel broke through the laths and plastering of the ceiling below.

That he could now effect his escape he had not the least doubt; yet it required time.

Nearly two hours of hard labor followed before he could hack a hole in the floor sufficiently large for him to pass through, and it was six o’clock before the work was done.

Then Nick pocketed his knife and lamp, wormed himself through the opening, and dropped into the room below.

He found himself in the house lately occupied by Nathan Godard.

Before leaving, Nick went to the basement and found an old broom, and with it removed all of the rubbish that had fallen to the floor.

“In case that jade comes here before to-morrow night, to learn if I have survived, I’ll have this stuff out of her way, and chance that she does not observe the ceiling,” he said to himself. “Even if she gets no sound from that trap up there, she’ll not dare open the door. To make sure of her movements, however, and that the trick for to-morrow night is by no means queered, I will have Patsy shadow these two houses all day to-morrow.”

It was nearly dark when Nick arrived home, and he sat up until midnight waiting for Chick to return.

The latter had left Belle Braddon less than an hour before, and she had been with Chick since six o’clock that evening, so Nick knew that she had not returned to Flood’s house.

Chick, moreover, had craftily planned with Belle to visit Godard’s shore house the following night, taking with them the alleged uncle who was to arrive from Dakota.

Naturally, the uncle was Nick Carter, and the two detectives were to meet Belle Braddon at the Waldorf the following afternoon.

At ten o’clock next morning Nick received a telegram from Green. It contained only two words:

“Brace on!”

Nick laughed exultingly when he read it, and passed it to Chick, the two being seated in Nick’s office.

“That does settle it,” declared the latter. “Godard is expecting us, and has given the humpback instructions about the cues.”

“Sure thing!” cried Chick. “Belle Braddon has fallen into the net I have spread for her, and Godard expects to find an easy mark in my cattle-raising uncle from Dakota.”

“It is Godard who will be the easy mark!” Nick grimly rejoined. “One thing is sure!”

“What’s that?”

“Belle Braddon will never dream that your uncle is Nick Carter.”

“Well, hardly,” laughed Chick. “She is probably dead sure that you are down and out by this time.”

“I have Patsy shadowing both houses, in case she goes there. That is not likely, however.”

“Not at all,” replied Chick. “Women don’t fancy dead bodies, and shrink from going where they are. Yet she’s about as bad a trickster in petticoats as I ever met.”

“I’ll go and tell the encouraging news to Flood and Harry Royal,” said Nick. “Then we will get ourselves in shape for the round-up.”

At noon that day the yellow-haired chap, who had been at the Waldorf for nearly ten days, appeared at the famous hotel with a companion—his uncle.

No man, however suspicious, would have recognized Nick in the disguise he then wore.

His face was stained to a hue acquired only by long exposure to the burning sun of the plains. His hair was coarse and black, and a heavy beard concealed the lower portion of his face. Two of his teeth had been “stopped out,” which, when he laughed, gave his mouth a peculiarly repulsive look. His hands gave evidence of much labor, and his figure was rounded at the shoulders and several inches below its normal height. He was clad in a suit characteristic of the part he had assumed, and presented, indeed, a most striking picture.

Precisely at six o’clock, Belle Braddon, arrayed in the height of fashion, arrived in a carriage at the hotel, where Chick received her and took her to his suite of rooms.

He had already cautioned her against appearing to be greatly amused by the oddities and roughness of the Western ranchman; yet when Belle Braddon met Nick and was introduced to him she scarcely could contain herself. She thought for sure that she was up against a genuine Western “Rube.”

A sonorous bass laugh came from Nick when they were introduced, to which was boisterously added, with a familiarity that tickled the girl immensely:

“So you’re the gal my Archie’s run up agin’, are you?”

“I guess I am, sir,” Belle admitted, blushing with affected demureness.

“Waal, to tell the hull truth, Miss Braddon, I’m durned if I don’t ruther envy him,” declared Nick, with blunt heartiness.

The girl laughed, shrugging her shoulders, and appearing greatly flattered, then laid off her wrap to wait for dinner.

It was six o’clock before the meal was served, and Nick dined and wined the party liberally.

During the progress of the dinner, which was served in one of the elaborate private dining-rooms, the project of going out to Godard’s shore house was brought up, and Nick expressed his readiness to give the game a good, handsome play.

“I’ve got money enough—barrels of it,” he declared to Belle, much to her delight. “And it’s meat and drink fur me, lass, to get up agin’ a layout.”

“Then you shall be accommodated,” laughed Belle.

“And I’ll not forget, gal, ’twas you who put us wise to the fun,” added Nick pointedly.

This looked to Belle Braddon like the promise of a reward, and she slyly pressed Nick’s hand under the table.

She received the reward all right—or, at least, what was coming to her.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE RIGHT MAN.

It was precisely nine o’clock when Nick Carter, Chick, and Belle Braddon arrived at Godard’s shore house, to which they were admitted by the humpback and conducted into the dining-room.

Nate Godard appeared pale and somewhat intoxicated when he received them, but his nerve quickly returned after the introductions and the hearty responses of his visitors, and he promptly invited them to the sideboard to have a drink.

“Here’s your very good health, Mr. Hedge,” said he, addressing Nick by the name he had assumed.

“Yours, too, sir,” cried Nick.

“So you are fond of bucking the tiger, are you, and have come out here to give my game a little play?”

“Fond of it’s no name for it, neighbor,” declared Nick, as he drained his glass. “I’m a bit off color just now, though, for I haven’t set down before a stack o’ checks for nigh a year. All the more saved up for you to win, eh?” he added, with a boisterous display of good humor. “That ere’s one way o’ looking at it, Mr. Godard.”

Godard joined in Nick’s loud laugh, and Belle Braddon, who was now making up to Nick with an eye to the future, playfully twined his arm with her hand and cried gleefully:

“Oh, you’re really too funny, Mr. Hedge.”

“Thet so, lass?”

“You make me laugh nearly every time you speak.”

“Waal, as long as I don’t make you cry, my dear gal, there’s no sleep to be lost, eh?”

“No, not a wink, sir,” Belle rejoined, with a seductive glance and smile.

A very little of such banter as this went a long way with Nick when more serious business was pressing, and he presently asked roundly:

“Where’s your game, Mr. Godard? Let’s have a look at it.”

“We can talk and play at the same time, you know,” put in Chick agreeably.

“You don’t do any playing, my boy,” roared Nick good-naturedly. “It’s bad enough fur one o’ the Hedge family to be up agin’ the tiger. You don’t set down a chip—mind that, my boy.”

“Well, I can look on, can’t I?” grumbled Chick. “There’s no harm in that!”

“Sure you can look on, lad. There’s no chance to lose in looking on.”

“Come up-stairs, Mr. Hedge,” said Godard.

“I’m coming, too,” declared Belle, as he led the way. “I want to see how you Westerners go at the game, Mr. Hedge.”

“We go at it, gal, like a bull at a gate,” Nick loudly laughed, slipping his arm around her as they mounted the stairs.

Green already had the room brightly lighted, yet he gave no sign of ever having seen the visitors.

The faro-room was, barring the elaborate furnishings at Flood’s, not unlike that previously described, and a sonorous laugh broke from Nick Carter when he beheld the layout on the table and saw the preparations which had been made for the game.

“Waal, she does have a durned natural look, Godard,” he cried, in stentorian tones. “How much can I sit to win?”

“Your expenses, at least,” Godard significantly replied, joining in the other’s laugh.

Nick’s expressive eyes evinced just the least bit of disappointment when he perceived the pack of cards laid carelessly on a chair at one side of the table, but when Nathan Godard took his seat back of the layout, and then produced a pack from behind the check-rack, a momentary blaze fired their somber depths, only to wane again to a steady glow like that of burning coals through the darkness.

Nick recognized the deck of cards at a glance.

It was the same deck of strippers with which Moses Flood had dealt himself a loser and afterward strapped in the satchel with the money he had paid to Cecil Kendall, less than one hour before the latter was murdered in the rectory grounds.

They were very positive evidence of Nathan Godard’s guilt, yet Nick knew that there were other cards like them, and foresaw that even further proof was desirable. A profound reader of human nature, as well as a man of tremendous mental force, Nick was planning to drive the wretch opposite to a frenzy of excitement when, at the proper time, he could evoke from him an involuntary yet absolute self-betrayal.

“My expenses, eh?” he boisterously replied, turning to wink at Belle, then at the humpback cuekeeper, who had taken his seat at the end of the table.

“Sure thing, sir, if you get ’em down right,” laughed Godard, a bit nervously.

“Waal, my expenses will be suthing,” roared Nick, “if we blow in the stuff as we did at the Waldorf. Gee whiz! but it costs suthing to eat and liquor up in that ’ere tavern. Eh, Archie?”

“Right you are, old man,” nodded Chick, who was seated near-by.

“Are you in with my play, lass, or with Godard’s?” cried Nick, turning to Belle with a great display of joviality.

“I’m always in with the winner,” replied the girl, with a ringing laugh.

“Oh, ho, that’s it, eh? Cunning as a kitten, aren’t you?”

“I’m always looking out for my own interest,” grinned Belle, patting Nick’s cheek from behind his chair.

“Good for you, gal,” cried Nick approvingly. “Waal, Mr. Godard, across the crick thar, give me a stack o’ chips. I’ll show you how we play the bank on the t’other side o’ the Mississip. I dropped seven thousand in hides in Chicago, on my way here, the which I’m out to get back. Ha, ha! in with the winner, lass, are you?”

While boisterously voicing the above, Nick drew from the side pocket of his coat a huge roll of bank-notes, from which he quickly stripped off two of five hundred dollars each, and carelessly tossed them across the layout.

“Gimme a stack o’ chips!” he cried noisily.

“One stack?” queried Godard, startled by the prospect of so big a game.

“One stack—sartin!” cried Nick. “Fifty dollars a chip, that’s good enough fur me. Same as plug ante, what we used to play in ’49 under the wagon-trains. What’s the limit, by the way?”

Godard began to tremble under this show of utter recklessness.

“You may stack them up until I call you down,” said he, speaking calmly with an effort.

Yet he did not feel easy. It is no small undertaking to deal brace faro, even under ordinary conditions; and to Godard these appeared without precedent.

His evil heart was beating like a trip-hammer. His blood was rushing like fire through his veins. Yet the sight of the pretended cattle-dealer’s money served to nerve him for a time, and with jaws fixed he began to shuffle the deck of strippers.

“Till you call me down, eh?” roared Nick, as if in great enjoyment. “That ought to be good enough, and it’s what I like to hear. No piking around fur me, a chip a rip. They say it’s good luck to stake a cuss afore beginning, so take that, my bucko, and put it in your kit.”

“Thankee, sir!” cried the humpback, as Nick tossed him a chip valued at fifty dollars.

Nick nodded and laughed.

“You’re sort of a cross atween a man and monkey, ain’t ye?” he jokingly demanded.

“Well, sir, I’ll not take any blue ribbons for my beauty,” rejoined Green, laughing.

“Ha, ha, ha!” roared Nick. “That’s the stuff, my lad! All ready, eh? What’s to the top o’ the box—an eight?”

Despite his show of carelessness, Nick had seen the cards shuffled, stripped, and butted. He knew to a certainty how to place his money. He divided his stack of chips and coppered two winners for the entire lot.

Godard felt a thrill of exultation.

Nick had set his money down to lose.

The miscreant opposite was not forced to take a false card in order to win, and he felt relieved.

The first turn from the box brought a decision—the pretended dealer in cattle had lost.

“Oh, ho!” he cried, with a quick flash of his eyes. “Can you do thet, ag’in? Let’s see you do thet ag’in!”

Godard’s only reply was to send out another turn from the deal box.

But Nick’s question was answered—he had lost again, just as he had planned.

Now he did not laugh. He jerked his chair quickly nearer the table, and ferociously yanked out his roll of money.

“Gimme two stacks this time!” he cried aggressively.

“Two goes, mister,” nodded Godard.

He raked in the bank-notes cast upon the layout, and set forth their equivalent in chips.

Yet he did not speak again, to add to his husky remark. He dared not trust his voice. It was nothing short of robbery, this that he was doing, and he felt that he could see his finish if he got caught cheating.

Nick looked and acted like a man who would fairly eat another, under such a provocation.

Then Nick went down upon the layout with every chip that he had bought.

This time he bet to win, thus forcing Godard to take a false card.

Nick’s object was to drive the man to a frenzy of excitement, when discretion would be overwhelmed, and then bring a climax that would evoke self-betrayal.

Godard took the false card, made a secret sign, and a quick responsive rap sounded from his cuekeeper.

Yet he was ghastly to the lips when he glanced at Nick to see if the deception had been detected.

Nick saw it all right, but his countenance did not change. He saw, too, that Godard was beginning to work under the highest kind of pressure.

The latter raked in a thousand dollars on the turn, and the magnitude of the possibility before him alone enabled him to maintain his nerve.

“Can’t I win a bet?” Nick hoarsely cried, after buying for the third time and losing. “Curse the infernal luck—can’t I win a bet?”

“You are really getting them down a bit unlucky, uncle,” observed Chick, with pretended sympathy.

“So he is, dear man,” said Belle, in persuasive tones.

They now appeared to be wasted upon the irate cattle-dealer, however.

“Gimme some more chips, Godard,” he fiercely growled, slinging a fifth thousand dollars over the layout. “Gimme some more chips, I say! What sort of a dealer hev I been steered up agin’, eh?”

“The deal is all right, sir,” stammered Godard.

“Who said ’twasn’t? I said dealer!” snarled Nick ferociously.

Godard’s hand shook visibly as he shoved the desired stacks of chips toward Nick. The strain upon him was something frightful, and his brain felt as if seared with a terrible heat. The gravity of the situation seemed to steadily increase, and fear of what might occur was taking ugly hold upon him. He ground his teeth together, and nerved himself to finish the deal.

From the top of the box to the bottom Nick did not win a bet.

He started the second deal ten thousand dollars loser, and Godard was trembling in his chair.

The second deal was about like the first.

Nick played to lose. He coppered the winning cards, and played the losers to win. Time and time again he forced himself to call for more chips, and each time noticed that Godard was becoming more and more beside himself. The perspiration stood in great drops on the latter’s face, and the arteries of his neck and brow were pulsing violently. Nick saw that he had him nearly where he wanted him.

Even Belle Braddon was gazing with affrighted eyes upon the dreadful scene, hushed and pale now, with her hands pressed above her heart.

Chick saw by the look in Nick’s eyes that the climax was approaching, and he quietly made ready for it.

Half-a-minute later Nick drove the knife deeper into his victim.

The deal had come down to two turns only, and Nick knew the cues were wrong and that Godard must take a card to right them.

Nick forced Godard to win by stealing, and the latter’s hand shook as if with palsy as he did it.

A rap from the cuekeeper followed, and then the announcement:

“Last turn!”

Nick resolved it should be the very last.

He placed his bet—and purposely lost!

Then he uttered a terrible cry, as if thrilled with sudden suspicion.

“Be the cues right? Be the cues right?” he roared, glaring fiercely at the startled humpback.

“Aye, sir——”

“Then lemme see them cards!” yelled Nick, with his swarthy face awfully distorted and his eyes blazing like fire. “Lemme see the cards. I say! —— you, Godard, there’s suthing wrong with them cards!”

The humpback leaped to his feet with a hoarse remonstrance, and while Nathan Godard, ghastly as a corpse, covered the cards with his left hand, his right went to his hip pocket.

It was the very move Nick wanted to see him make.

“Lemme see ’em!” he roared furiously, half rising from his chair. “I tell you there’s suthing wrong with them cards!”

“I think not——”

“Lemme see ’em! Lemme see ’em, or I’ll——”

“Let him see them, Nate!” shrieked Belle Braddon, wild lest Godard’s frightful agitation should betray him.

Nick reached across the layout with a terrible imprecation, and snatched the pack of cards from under Godard’s quivering hand.

“There’s blood on them!” he roared fiercely, with his eyes fixed on those of the shaking man opposite. “There’s blood on them! The blood of a man killed for money—killed for gain, and by you who now——”

Nick got no further.

The thrilling accusation was more than Nate Godard, in his unnerved condition, could sustain. He saw the scheme by which he was being duped—and he saw again the staring corpse that he had left behind him in the rectory grounds in Fordham.

With a single wild cry, most like a shriek, he leaped to his feet.

“Curse you!” he yelled; “I know you now! You’re Moses Flood!”

“You lie!” thundered Nick, tearing off his disguise. “I am Nick Carter, the detective!”

Belle Braddon uttered a scream that pierced the very walls of the house, and from somewhere under her skirts snatched out a revolver.

Chick Carter, with eyes alert to see where he was most needed, was upon her as a leopard leaps upon a hare.

“Not on your life, miss!” he cried, wrenching away the weapon and forcing her into a chair.

Nate Godard, too, had drawn his revolver, but he never again discharged it.

Nick swept across the table like a whirlwind, and in an instant had the desperate man by the throat.

Then he drew back, startled.

Godard’s grip on his revolver had relaxed, and the weapon fell clattering to the floor. He threw both hands above his head, like one stricken a fatal blow, then brought both palms violently to his skull, as if within were the seat of a dreadful pain. His distorted face suddenly grew ghastly, with lips drawn and eyes rolling, and but for Nick Carter’s supporting arm he would have fallen headlong to the floor.

“He’s done for!” cried Nick to Chick, over his shoulder.

Nick was right: one glance at the man’s death-swept face was enough.

In the awful stress of his horror, terror, and excitement, Nathan Godard had ruptured an artery of his brain.

The rest, involving the subsequent fortunes of those who have figured in these pages, may be briefly and simply told.

Godard died within an hour, without regaining consciousness, and thus cheated human justice, only to meet at a divine tribunal the punishment he deserved.

From Belle Braddon, however, whom fear of punishment now drove to a confession, the facts were obtained that fully established Godard’s guilt.

He had left the faro-bank just after seeing Kendall win the ninety thousand dollars, and when the latter emerged Godard shadowed him to Fordham.

As Nick Carter had shrewdly reasoned, Kendall went to peer through the library window before entering the rectory. Godard, meantime, had seen Flood arrive and hitch his team at the rear gate, putting his heavy cane in the body of the buggy.

Flood, however, wishing to see Dora Royal alone, had not gone directly to that side of the house on which the crime was committed, but had passed slowly around it, in the hope of attracting her attention from one of the windows.

Godard, meantime, secured Flood’s cane, waylaid and killed Kendall, then made off with the satchel of money, afterward concealing the cane in the brushwood, that the crime might be charged to Flood.

The latter, upon coming around the house, had seen only Harry Royal, with the results already set forth.

Belle Braddon did not for her confession, however, escape punishment for her evil doings. Nick promptly placed her under arrest, as an accessory after the crime, as well as for the attempt upon his life, and she ultimately received her just deserts.

When the heroic part that Moses Flood had played in behalf of the Royals was fully made known to the rector, he did precisely what Nick Carter anticipated. Upon Flood’s renunciation of his business, which had been entirely voluntary, Doctor Royal forgave the past and accepted him as his daughter’s suitor.

Flood went abroad for six months, returning as the American representative of one of the largest silk concerns in France, and he and Dora Royal were married that year, establishing themselves in a fine West End Avenue residence. The two houses, which were sad reminders of his past, Flood sold to the best advantage, and gave the entire proceeds to charity.

The love and gratitude of the happy couple for Nick Carter may be easily imagined, and both were numbered among Nick’s dearest friends.

The great detective frequently said of Flood in after years, when recalling the incidents here depicted:

“He certainly was the prince of gamesters!”

And certainly it seems to be a good safe wager that Nick Carter, as usual, was entirely right.

THE END.

FRANK MERRIWELL

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Transcriber’s Notes

• Silently corrected a few typos.
• Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.
• Added a Table of Contents, based on chapter headings.
• In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.