The Second Nick Carter MEGAPACK®, page 10
“He wishes to visit the place where Claudia and I were held up and robbed, and he came here to ask me to go with him. Now, if you have no particular trip you wish to make to-day—”
“None whatever!” cried Badger, quickly interrupting. “We are out for an airing only, and I’d as soon go that way as any. The road to Canton—can you locate the precise place, Vic?”
“Surely.”
“Then we’ll take him out there at once, if he wishes,” said Badger, quickly reverting to Nick. “What do you say, Carter? There’s a seat in my auto, if you care to go.”
Nick had foreseen what was coming, and had decided what course to take.
“Yes, I’ll go,” he said briefly.
“Good enough!” cried Badger. “Get into your wraps, Vic, and we’ll start at once.”
Nick had seen, in fact, no wise alternative to accepting the offer. To have declined it, after the request he had made Vic Clayton, might have aroused suspicions which he had no reason to believe already existed. He would take no chance of that before positive evidence against these knaves had been secured.
That he had been betrayed from police headquarters, that his suspicions and designs were already partly known, that he was now up against a plot hurriedly arranged by telephone, that he was the victim of an admirably played game, that his life itself was in jeopardy from that moment—only a clairvoyant could have seen all this.
Nick Carter was not a clairvoyant, however, nor had he any reasonable cause for suspecting the real gravity of his situation.
Yet with caution that was habitual to him when in the company of persons known to be crooks, Nick became more wary from the moment he took his seat in Badger’s automobile.
It was a Packard four-cylinder motor-car, and Badger was running the machine. With Nick beside him on the front seat, and his wife and Vic Clayton behind, the party of four were soon speeding through Brookline toward the woodland roads of the famous Blue Hills.
Though the animated conversation that was sustained meantime is not material here, it soon led Nick to form, in conjunction with the polite attentions bestowed upon him, a new theory in explanation of the seemingly natural situation.
“These crafty rascals are merely aiming to make a favorable impression upon me with their courtesies,” he said to himself, during a lull in the conversation.
“They are doing so in the hope of averting suspicion, with a view to convincing me that they are as honest and fashionable as they appear. They look and seem all right. I’ll give them credit for that, and if I knew less about them, I’m blessed if they wouldn’t fool me with their pretensions.”
This soliloquy ran through Nick’s mind more than an hour after they had started, but it was given the lie most violently less than five minutes later.
The car was then speeding along a woodland road in the Blue Hills, and Badger was bent forward over his steering-wheel, apparently intent upon the road ahead.
As far as the eye could reach, the road was deserted. One hundred yards ahead it divided, a branch road turning off to the left.
The junction of the two was in the very midst of a belt of woods, with no sign of a house or clearing in sight.
After one swift, backward glance over her shoulder, Vic Clayton suddenly leaned forward and cried, above the noise of the machine:
“You must take that road to the east, Amos. The other leads to—”
“No, no, you’re wrong about that,” Badger quickly called back over his shoulder.
“No, I’m not!”
“The west road leads to Canton.”
“You’re mistaken, Amos,” insisted Vic, in apparent excitement, as the car rapidly approached the junction. “We must take the east road. Mustn’t we, Claudia?”
Badger slowed down, as if in some uncertainty, then brought the car to a stop just at the junction.
“Well, I am not really sure,” cried his wife, doubtfully looking about—yet only to make sure that no other car was in sight in any direction. “It’s all right, Amos—”
Badger was already upon his feet, interrupting her.
“Nonsense!” he exclaimed, while Nick glanced up with a feeling of distrust. “If we take that road, Vic, it will— Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Carter!”
Apparently by accident, while gesticulating about the road, he had knocked Nick’s derby hat from his head.
Then, with a lightning like move, made as if to catch the hat before it could fall to the ground, he threw himself across the detective’s body, confining his arms to his sides.
At that moment Vic Clayton had risen up in the car, standing directly behind Nick.
“Now!” yelled Badger, with terrible ferocity.
There was no need for the command.
Already the uplifted hand of the fortune-teller was descending; a hand fiercely gripping a clubbed revolver, and thrice the butt of the heavy weapon fell squarely upon Nick Carter’s unprotected head.
The tragic episode had been enacted in the fraction of a second, before Nick could realize the design, much less prevent it, and a single blow delivered as the three had been would well-nigh have felled an ox.
Without so much as a groan, with every muscle suddenly relaxing, Nick dropped inert and senseless upon the floor of the car, his hair and brow turned crimson by a swift gush of blood.
In an instant Badger was out upon the ground.
“Take my seat, Claudia,” he hurriedly cried to his wife. “Lend me a hand here, Vic, and we’ll throw him in behind. I’ll bind him hand and foot after we start again. There, there, that will do! Now around with the car, Claudia, and drive for home as if the devil followed us!”
The transfer had been made in half a minute.
In another half the car was speeding back over the woodland road at thirty miles an hour—heading for Badger’s place near Brookline.
Senseless, between the seats, out of view of any persons whom the speeding car might pass along the road, lay the man for whom failure only had been predicted by the desperate woman who had struck him down.
CHAPTER XIII.
CLOSE QUARTERS.
“It’s not for me to say what you’ll do or not do, since you now appear to hold the ribbons. It’s up to you, Badger, and not for me to say.”
The above came from Nick Carter several hours after the tragic episode enacted in the woodland road.
Bound hand and foot, with his head rudely bandaged, Nick sat propped against one of four stone walls, evidently those of a small cellar, or possibly a wine-vault, with but one heavy door through which the place was accessible.
Only the bare earth was under him, damp and cold, while a small pool of stagnant water in one corner of the place evinced the depressed location of the ground.
Two empty beer-kegs stood on end near-by.
On one of them a lantern was burning, the rays from which shed only a dismal light over the more dismal scene.
On the other keg sat Amos Badger, with his hands on his knees, his lowering gaze fixed upon the helpless detective, and his dark features wearing a look of mingled satisfaction and sinister scorn.
It was then well into the evening, and Nick Carter had with some difficulty been doctored back to consciousness, and to a keen realization of his aching head and a most unenviable situation.
The restoration had been accomplished by Conley, who was somewhat of a veterinary physician, and it was no sooner done than Badger hastened to interview his captive, an interview only just begun when Nick made the remark which opens this chapter.
“Up to me, is it?” returned Badger, with stern complacency. “Up to me to say what shall be done with you?”
“I cannot see that anything I say would be of weight,” said Nick coolly.
“That’s right—it wouldn’t!”
“Not at present.”
“No, nor later!” sneered Badger sharply. “You’ve had your last say, Carter, now that we have you in our clutches.”
“A very rascally game you played to accomplish it!”
“When you go hunting rascals, Carter, you must expect to be turned down by their own methods, if at all.”
“That’s right, too, and I was imprudent in not being ready for you.”
“You were up against more craft and cunning than you bargained for.”
“I don’t need to be informed of it,” retorted Nick, now wondering when, how, and for what reason they had planned the trick.
For he knew the assault must have been planned previous to his talk with Vic Clayton that afternoon, or it could not have been so quickly executed, nor the trap itself so definitely arranged.
“One fact is now very obvious, however,” he presently added, hoping to lead Badger into some inadvertent disclosure.
“What fact?” growled Badger, frowning at him.
“Some person informed you of the request I designed to make the Clayton woman.”
“Think so?”
“Or informed her.”
“You’re getting wise fast.”
“Otherwise, Badger, you couldn’t have planned the job among you,” continued Nick.
“Perhaps not.”
“I can come pretty near guessing who it was, too, since Chief Weston is the only man I informed of my intention.”
“Most likely he sent a messenger out here and warned us,” sneered Badger, with a grin.
“Not he,” retorted Nick. “But there’s a red-headed sketch and outline of a man in his office, Badger, whom I’ll come pretty near rounding up along with the rest of you, when I get out of this hole.”
“There will be no immediate rounding up, Carter, since it depends upon you alone,” replied Badger, with a searching stare at Nick’s face.
“Ah, then you were also told that I’m alone on the case,” said Nick, willing enough to have him think so.
“Aren’t you alone on it?”
“If I’m not, Badger, you’ll hear from others soon enough.”
“There are no others.”
“All right.”
“And you are now helpless.”
“Not quite.”
“As good as down and out.”
“But I’m still in the ring,” insisted Nick.
“You’re in hands from which you’ll never escape alive, I give you my word on that,” cried Badger, with menacing austerity.
“Your word, Badger, is a poor voucher.”
“You now know far too much about us for us to let you escape and disclose it,” added the latter decisively. “I now want to know of just what your knowledge consists, and what action you have taken against us.”
Nick laughed a bit derisively.
“I guess, Badger, you’ll have to take it out in wanting,” said he.
“You’ll not inform me?”
“Not by a long chalk.”
“I shall find a way to compel you.”
“Possibly,” said Nick. “But you’ll have a long hunt before you find the way.”
“You’ll let me alone to find that,” cried Badger, with confident asperity. “I can devise tortures so acute that even you will reveal what you have done toward—”
His rascally threat was interrupted at that point by the sound of approaching steps from beyond the partly closed door. In a moment it was thrown open, and Jerry Conley, followed by Vic Clayton and Badger’s wife, entered the dismal place.
That the two women were as low-bred and disreputable as had been reported to Nick appeared in their utter disregard of his wretched condition, and the malicious satisfaction with which they stared at him, as they might have stared at a caged beast which they had had occasion to fear.
“You’ve got him back to earth, have you?” asked Claudia, with a glance at Badger’s grim face. “Jerry just came and told us, so we thought we’d have a look at him.”
Vic Clayton, however, came and bent above Nick, peering down at his stern features, now white from loss of blood; while her own evil eyes, with the mocking smile that curled her cruel lips, plainly evinced her despicable and malignant nature.
“Well, you’ve got as many lives as a cat, haven’t you?” she demanded, in taunting tones.
Nick returned her evil stare with hardly a change of countenance, yet there was in his lifted eyes an ominous, fiery gleam, from which those who knew him best had learned to shrink with fear.
“I shall live long enough to repay with interest the blows you dealt me, and to land you where you belong?” he sternly rejoined.
“You will, eh?” sneered Vic, with a derisive laugh.
“Without the slightest doubt.”
“Evidently you’ve forgotten what I predicted for you.”
“The predictions of a charlatan are seldom fulfilled.”
“Charlatan?”
“And crook,” added Nick.
“Don’t be saucy, Mr. Carter, not to a lady,” said the frowning jade. “You’ll meet with just what I predicted for you—failure.”
“I’ll risk that.”
“And you’re in a very fair way to it,” added Vic, with a sinister nod, as she terminated her malicious scrutiny and turned to Amos Badger.
The latter had drawn aside with his wife and Conley, and the three stood talking in subdued tones, apparently with no interest in the recent amusement of their confederate.
“Well, what do you say?” demanded Vic, as she approached them. “We’ve got him, all right. Now, what’s to be done with him?”
“That’s what we are discussing,” growled Conley, who had much of the ruffian in him. “I say ’twas a mistake not to have let him croak, if he’d have been accommodating enough to do so.”
“Bah!” muttered Claudia. “Men with as hard heads as his don’t die so easily.”
“To my way of thinking,” added Conley, “it’s safest for us to put out his light at once, and be done with it.”
Badger, however, quickly shook his head.
“Not yet,” said he grimly. “Not before to-morrow.”
“But why the delay?” protested Conley. “I cannot see anything in that.”
“Then I’ll tell you why.”
“Well, out with it.”
Nick pricked up his ears, yet he could catch only a word now and then louder than others.
“To begin with,” argued Badger, “I’m not going to run my neck into a noose before I know just how we stand. We have no blood on our hands as yet, and before I take chances of that kind, Conley, I’m going to be dead sure that Carter has not reported his suspicions to Weston. What good will it do to put him out of the way, only to find that we have half a score of Boston detectives on our heels, to whom Carter’s discoveries have been imparted.”
“But Sandy declares that Weston knows nothing about that,” whispered Vic.
“I hope he doesn’t, but I’m going to be sure of it before I wipe out Nick Carter,” said Badger.
“How can you make sure?” growled Conley.
“We shall know by to-morrow at this time.”
“How so?”
“Because we shall have others after us, Jerry, just as soon as the discovery is made that Carter is missing,” reasoned Badger. “If none show up, we may then safely assume that Sandy Hyde is right, and that Carter has disclosed nothing definite. We shall then know that he’s the only one we need fear, and it will then be time enough to put him down and out.”
“Well, there’s something in that,” Conley now muttered.
“We know he cannot escape.”
“H’m! I should say not.”
“So there’s no need of haste, since we have him in our clutches,” added Badger. “Besides, there is another thing to be considered.”
“What’s that?”
“Carter may have some of his New York assistants here, for all we positively know to the contrary.”
“Sandy says not,” interposed Vic.
“He may not be absolutely sure,” Badger argued. “And until we are dead certain of it, which should be by to-morrow at this time, I am resolved to take no chance of some day being tried for murder.”
“That does have an ugly sound,” said Vic, with a dismal grimace.
“And there’s an ugly penalty,” added her sister.
“So that settles it, Jerry,” said Badger. “We’ll keep Carter right here till we know just what we’re up against.”
“Well, that’s good enough for me if ’tis for you,” said Conley indifferently.
“Are you sure his bonds are secure?”
“If he loosens any of those knots, Amos, I’ll eat the ropes,” was the confident rejoinder.
“To-morrow we’ll take steps to make him open his mouth, and tell all he knows.”
“What steps?”
“I’ll find a way, let me alone for that.”
“Meantime—” began Vic.
“No more here,” interposed Badger. “It’s too infernally damp and cold. Go back to the house, you two women, and I’ll presently join you there. I’ll first make sure that things here are all safe.”
“All right, Amos.”
The two women withdrew from the vault, Nick following them with his gaze.
The two men remained, and both now proceeded to make doubly sure that the ropes binding Nick’s arms and limbs were securely knotted.
Not a word was spoken.
The work required less than a minute, and Badger then took up the lantern and signed for Conley to go out ahead.
At the door of the vault, however, Badger turned back for a moment, to say, with vicious assurance:
“If it is to be one of us who must go down and out, Carter, it will be you! Take my word for that!”
For a moment Nick gazed sternly at him across the dismal place, then coldly retorted:
“Since I have only your word for it, Badger, I feel perfectly safe!”
Badger vented a half-smothered growl, then closed the heavy door with a resounding bang.
Nick heard the shooting of bolts and the sound of a bar dropped into place.
Then all was silence for a time—silence and darkness!
CHAPTER XIV.
SHADOWS AND SHADOWED.
“Thundering guns!” muttered Patsy. “He’d be an ugly cur to meet in the dark.”
Chick Carter gazed in the direction indicated.
