Chapter X: The Other Strings

Patsy Garvan did not ride far with Danny Maloney after their parting from Nick Carter and Henley. Glancing back over his shoulder, Patsy waited only until they had rounded the curve in the road, when he called quickly:

“Slow down, Danny, and drop me. We’re out of sight.”

Danny obeyed at once, saying regretfully:

“Gee! I wish I was going with you. I might be needed.”

“One is better than two,” Patsy replied, leaping down to the road. “There’s only half the risk of being seen. I can fill the bill, all right, single-handed.”

“So long, then, and good luck.”

“Same to you.”

Danny sped on with the car.

Patsy Garvan, however, plunged into the woods, at once shaping a course that would bring him in sight of the crossroad through which Nick and Henley were to pass.

It was to enable Patsy to make this detour that Nick repeatedly stopped on the road, pretending he wanted to find footprints left by the missing couple.

Patsy accomplished the move with no great difficulty, and entirely unsuspected by Henley, owing to the artful attitude toward him that Nick had assumed.

Patsy saw them pass along the road; in fact, saw them on the edge of the pond, and then he followed them at a discreet distance until, from behind one of the outbuildings, he saw Nick held up by Henley and afterward taken into the house.

“Gee! that does settle it,” he said to himself. “I must know who is there and what’s going to come off, but it won’t do for me to approach the house from this side. Those rats are in the rear rooms, or a side one, or they could not have reached the back door so quickly after Henley whistled. I’ll make a circuit to the front road and have a look.”

It took Patsy several minutes to do so, seeking the shelter of a wall over which he could plainly see the front of the dwelling, and he then met with an agreeable surprise.

A familiar whistle fell upon his ears, and he turned and discovered Chick under the same wall.

“Gee whiz!” he exclaimed, when they met. “This is dead lucky, for fair.”

“It’s not all luck, I guess,” Chick replied. “Give the chief the credit for it.”

“You found your man?”

“I arrived just in time to see him leaving his office.”

“He must be out here, now, since you are here.”

“That’s what,” Chick nodded. “He went round to the back door of the house about ten minutes ago. I’ve been waiting and watching till I could get a line on what’s going on in there.”

“Gee! I can supply that line, all right,” chuckled Patsy.

“Cut loose, then,” said Chick.

Patsy informed him with very few words what had occurred, and the subterfuge Nick had employed.

“It now is up to us, Chick,” he added. “The gang we want is in that house, and probably Arthur Gordon. We must go in and get them. There’s nothing else to it.”

“Only one thing,” corrected Chick, who again was sizing up the house.

“What’s that?”

“The way to get in, Patsy, so as to catch them hands down. It’s a hundred to one that they are on the ground floor, also in one of the rear rooms, as you have said.”

“It’s a safe gamble, Chick, in my opinion.”

“And I am equally sure that we could not force any of the lower windows without being heard. We can take a chance and approach the front of the house, and by climbing that trellis at the east end of the veranda, we can reach the veranda roof and three of the second-floor windows.”

“Like breaking sticks,” nodded Patsy approvingly. “It’s dollars to doughnuts that we then can quietly force one of the windows.”

“I think so, too.”

“Well, what do you say?”

“I say do it, Patsy, and be quick about it,” Chick declared, when unable to discover a sign of any person in the front part of the house.

“I’m with you,” Patsy muttered. “Head straight across the lawn to the east end of the veranda.”

They vaulted the wall while he was speaking, then covered the distance at record speed. After waiting and listening for a few moments, they felt sure that they had not been seen. To climb the trellis and reach the veranda roof then was child’s play, and both then began an inspection of the curtained windows.

Chick found one through which he could work his knife blade, thrusting up between the sashes, and in a very few moments he had succeeded in throwing the lock.

Noiselessly raising the lower section, he then pushed aside the curtain and peered in, finding that the window opened into the hall on the second floor. Listening, he could faintly hear voices from below, but could not distinguish whose, nor what was said.

“Come on, Patsy,” he whispered, with a significant glance at him. “Have a gun ready. I’ll lead the way.”

“You won’t be far in advance,” muttered Patsy dryly.

Crawling quietly through the window, one after the other, they tiptoed toward the broad, angular stairway leading to the lower hall.

“Keep on, old top,” whispered Patsy, now with a revolver in each hand. “The sooner we get them the better.”

“I think so, too.”

“They’re in one of the side rooms. Ah, that was the chief’s voice.”

“Come on,” Chick muttered, starting down the stairs.

Patsy followed close at his companion’s heels.

They had made only the first turn in the stairway, when the voice of Mortimer Deland, rising high with the last threatening words he was addressing to Nick Carter, coupled with his fierce commands to his three confederates, fell loud and clear on the two detective’s ears.

Chick Carter glanced at Patsy and pulled out a second revolver.

“Fire the house, will he?” he whispered hurriedly. “There’ll be firing of another kind done here, if necessary.”

“You bet!” nodded Patsy, with brows knitting.

“Shoot to kill, if you have to shoot.”

“Kill goes!”

“They’ll come out this way,” Chick said hurriedly, as they reached the foot of the stairway and paused for an instant near the front door.

“Had we better rush in on them?”

“We might meet them on the threshold and get into too close quarters,” said Chick, after an instant’s thought. “We’d better get them after they come into the hall.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Slip across into that front parlor and be ready to nail them from that side,” Chick directed. “I’ll cover this part of the hall.”

“I’ve got you,” Patsy nodded. “Give a yell when you’re ready.”

He darted across the hall with the last and into the dim, luxuriously furnished parlor.

Chick crouched back of the rise of the stairs.

Both scarce had gained these positions when the four crooks, with Nick in their midst, issued from the dining room and headed toward the front of the hall.

Chick waited until they were midway between the several doors, that no swift leap into either room should save any of them. Then he uttered the yell for which Patsy Garvan was waiting.

“Now, Patsy, get them!”

Nick Carter heard him, and then saw both. As quick as a flash, he shouldered both Deland and Henley to the middle of the hall, then leaped quickly back into the dining room, out of range of a chance bullet.

Chick saw the idea, and a shriek instantly followed his yell.

“Hands up, you fellows! We’ll drop the first man who resists!”

“Every man!” roared Patsy, with both guns leveled.

There were four weapons covering the crooks, with bullets enough in all to have riddled them.

Only one of them acted under the impulse of desperation--Jim Henley.

His shotgun, with which he had been prodding Nick in the back, leaped to the hollow of his arm.

Bang!

It was Chick’s revolver that barked. The shotgun fell to the floor, and Henley with it, shot through the head.

Nothing more sanguinary and determined was needed. Deland and his other two confederates instantly threw up their hands--and kept them up till Patsy and Nick Carter were ready to fit them with bracelets.

That ended the sensational features of the extraordinary case. Henley died within an hour, and two hours saw the other three in the Tombs, two to be convicted and sentenced a fortnight later, and Mortimer Deland to return to finish his unexpired term in the State’s prison.

Arthur Gordon was found, as stated, bound hand and foot in an upper room of the old house. Though intensely grateful to the Carters for his rescue and liberation, he was a thousand times more surprised at what they told him. Up to that moment he had not dreamed of the true identity of Pauline Perrot, who had, as Nick had inferred, artfully wheedled him into meeting her on a supposed business matter with a friend that evening, only to throw him into the hands of Henley, Foster, and Brigham.

The gratitude of Mr. Rudolph Strickland, and the joy and relief of Wilhelmina, when Gordon was brought home safely and the truth made known, were all that the most vivid imagination could picture. Their reward to Nick and his assistants, too, was in corresponding proportion.

It afterward appeared, too, that all of Nick’s suspicions and deductions were absolutely correct; and that Deland, in assuming the character of Dayton, had done so only to have a quick refuge from Gordon’s office, if it became necessary, and a character in which he could bury Pauline Perrot at a moment’s notice.

Nick Carter had thwarted him completely, however, and had secured him temporarily, at least.

THE END.

“Blood Will Tell; or, Nick Carter’s Play in Politics,” will be the
title of the long, complete story which you will find in the next
issue, No. 156, of the NICK CARTER STORIES, out September 4th. In
this narrative you will read of the final round-up of Mortimer
Deland. You will also find the usual installment of the serial now
running in this publication, together with several interesting
articles.

DEMONSTRATED.

It was a saying of a wise man that we have one mouth and two ears in order that we may listen twice as much as we speak.

A teacher once quoted this remark to his pupils, and not long afterward, to see how well the instruction was remembered, asked:

“Why is it that we have two ears and only one mouth, Brown?”

Brown had forgotten the philosopher’s explanation, but thought the question not a very hard one.

“Because,” he said, “we should not have room in our face for two mouths, and we should look too crooked if we had only one ear.”

“No, no,” said the master, “that is not the reason. You know, don’t you, Smith?”

“Yes, sir,” answered that hopeful. “So that what we hear may go in at one ear and out at the other.”

SNAPSHOT ARTILLERY.

By BERTRAM LEBHAR.

(This interesting story was commenced in No. 153 of NICK CARTER STORIES. Back numbers can always be obtained from your news dealer or the publishers.)