A Network of Crime by Nick Carter - HTML preview

CHAPTER IX.
 THE LAST RESORT.

Nick Carter was not long in learning whither he was bound. The jostling of the truck over the uneven ground in the narrow passage between the buildings ceased in a very few moments.

Nick then felt himself rudely lifted from the truck and carried under cover. Through the burlap in which he had been wrapped he could detect the pungent scent of lime, which confirmed his earlier suspicions.

“They’ve brought me to that building close to the river,” he said to himself. “The outlook isn’t very promising, unless Chick or Patsy had picked up the trail of Goulard before he started for the Badger house. There is a reasonably fair chance of that, in which case——”

Nick’s train of thought was abruptly broken.

Four of the ruffians had raised him again and were taking him up a flight of steps leading to the loft of the building. There they dropped him on the floor and removed the burlap with which he was half smothered.

Nick sat up and turned his shoulders to the near wall. Gazing around, he saw a large, unfinished room, partly filled with unopened barrels of lime. Cobwebs hung in festoons from the roof and beams. The only light came through two windows overlooking the river, the swash and swirl of which could be plainly heard.

Gaston Goulard came up the stairs at that moment and at once flashed a sharp glance around the dismal place. He then strode quickly across to one of the windows and looked out.

Nick and Ben Badger, also, guessed what the rascal had in mind, and the latter said, with a grim laugh:

“That would be out of the frying pan into the fire, Goulard. Better take chances with the police, than with the East River.”

“I’m not looking to take either chance,” Goulard replied, with a frown settling on his white face.

“There’s no danger here,” Badger said confidently. “This place is not suspected.”

“Are the doors below securely locked?”

“The front one is locked and barred,” said Dakin. “No guns know anything about the other, or the way of getting to it. You’re safe enough here.”

“Let Quicklime Jimmy alone to know what he’s talking about,” declared Badger, with another laugh. “Take that gag from the dick’s mouth, Glidden,” he added. “I want to talk with him.”

The bandage already had fallen from Nick’s eyes, and Glidden now removed the gag, enabling Nick to speak and breathe more freely.

Badger seated himself on the top of a barrel a few feet from the detective, regarding him with sinister scrutiny for a moment. He then said curtly:

“You see that we’ve got you, Carter.”

“I have eyes,” Nick replied.

“There is no loophole for you to slip through.”

“I’m not looking for one,” said Nick, with outward indifference. “When I decide to look, Badger, I may find one.”

“Not on your life,” snapped Goulard, approaching. “If I thought that, I’d put a bullet into you on the spot.”

“You are quite capable of it, Goulard.”

“You bet I am, Carter, in your case. If there is one man on earth whom I hate, you’re the man.”

“Better your hatred, Goulard, than your friendship,” Nick said sternly. “Mr. Henry Mantell, your late partner in business, will vouch for that.”

“Curse you, I——”

“Cut that!” snapped Badger, thrusting Goulard aside when he reached for a weapon. “You’ll be given a chance to have your say a little later. Just now, Goulard, I’ll do the talking with the dick.”

Goulard drew back, white and frowning, and glanced again toward one of the windows.

“No, Carter, you’d find no loophole,” said Badger, reverting to him. “The best we can offer you is a choice between the East River, a toss in the darkness through one of those windows, or a bed in a couple of feet of quicklime.”

“I’ll let you make the selection,” said Nick coldly.

“No great choice, eh?” sneered Badger, grinning.

“None as far as I am concerned.”

“Carter, you’re a cool dick, all right. I suppose, if we were really pressed to do so, we would offer you something better,” Badger slowly added, after a moment.

Nick eyed him narrowly, noting his altered tone.

“What is that?” he inquired.

“A chance to compromise.”

“Not on your life!” cried Goulard hotly. “I’ll not stand for——”

“You close your trap till I’m through,” snapped Badger fiercely. “You then can have your say, but not till then! I run this gang, Mr. Goulard, and what I say goes. Now, Carter, what do you say?”

“To what?”

“To a compromise.”

“What sort of a compromise?”

“That’s easily stated,” said Badger. “You agree to step out of this case with your assistants, keep your hands off of us and your mouth closed, and do nothing to expose us. In return, you get your liberty and——”

“Stop a moment,” Nick interrupted.

“Well?”

“Suppose I consent to such a compromise, will you accept it?”

“Certainly,” nodded Badger. “Why not?”

“Wouldn’t you be taking a chance?”

“That you might betray us?”

“Exactly.”

Badger quickly shook his head.

“Not the ghost of a chance, Carter,” he said roundly. “I know you from ’way back. I’d take your word against the national house of congress. It’s up to you, Carter, to——”

“Enough said, Badger,” Nick interrupted. “I never in my life compromised with a crook for my own safety, and I shall not begin with you.”

“But——”

“There aren’t any buts, Badger,” Nick thundered—not without a reason.

His quick ear, close to the wall against which he was leaning, had caught a faint sound, unheard by any of the others—the slight creak of a hinge on the passageway door at the foot of the stairs.

It told him on the instant that help was at hand. Bent upon covering the approach of whomever it might be, though he suspected the truth, Nick went on with augmented vehemence, his sonorous voice fairly drowning all other sounds:

“No, no, Badger, I never would consent to that. I am a servant of the law, a protector of society. My duty to both, my own integrity, the dictates of my conscience, every spark of manhood in my nature, all would forbid——”

“Oh, hang your conscience!” roared Badger, interrupting. “You’ll get all that’s coming to you, then! You’ll get——”

He broke off as if suddenly tongue-tied.

He saw the heads and helmets of a crowd of men rushing up the stairs, men with revolvers in their hands and stern determination in their eyes, a great posse of police led by Chick Carter and Patsy Garvan.

Before he could find his voice, that of Chick Carter rang through the dismal loft:

“Hands up! We’ve got you, boys! Don’t show fight if you want to live! There’ll be nothing to it!”

“Nothing but the shouting!” yelled Patsy, as the detectives and the police bounded up and into the loft.

Their increasing numbers and display of weapons awed every crook save one—Gaston Goulard.

He vented a snarl like that of a cornered wolf. Turning like a flash, he darted to the window at which he had repeatedly glanced. He did not stop upon reaching it.

He dived straight through it, carrying away panes and sashes, and vanished on the instant in the gathering dusk outside.

Patsy bounded to the window and looked out.

He saw the splash of falling spray where the man had gone down in the black, swirling waters of the river. He waited and watched—but watched vainly.

No head rose to the surface—no form to tell that Gaston Goulard had not paid the price for his crimes.

The arrest and incarceration of the other crooks were easily and quickly accomplished. Sadie Badger already had been arrested, and was on her way with Slugger Sloan to the precinct station. All were in custody before six o’clock that evening.

In a room back of some lime barrels in a corner of the loft, was found not only Juan Padillo, gagged and bound hand and foot, but also the suit case and its contents—both held there by the Badger gang until they learned what course the police investigations were likely to take.

Nick Carter and his assistants had showed them much sooner than they had anticipated.

The story told by Padillo, whose relief and gratitude were utterly beyond expression, confirmed all of Nick’s deductions from the evidence he had gathered.

It appeared that Goulard and Taggart, contemplating a burglary in the Mantell mansion, had come there to look over the ground on the very night Frank read the Vandyke letter to his wife and parents. The crooks overheard him, as Nick had suspected, and at once framed up the job to get Padillo and his war prize. Not sure that they remembered the letter perfectly, Goulard had stolen into the house one day, picking the lock of the desk and making a copy of the letter during the night, and successfully stealing out of the house the following morning.

While discussing their scheme with Sloan in a barroom a few days later, they were overheard by Ben Badger, who was in an adjoining booth. He at once framed up a job with his gang, or the men included in it, to get into the Manhattanville house before Goulard arrived from the vessel with his victim, and to get away with him and his suit case.

They broke into the house through the basement immediately after dark that evening, and before Taggart and Slugger Sloan arrived, who had come to aid Goulard in disposing of the Mexican. When they undertook this and Padillo realized his situation, he at once stabbed Taggart and started in to finish the others and escape from the house.

He would have failed but for the interference of the Badger gang, whom Padillo took to be friends because of their aid, and the fight ended precisely as Nick had deduced, Padillo going willingly with the Badger gang, only to later find himself helplessly in their clutches.

He stated that Goulard was the man who had shot Batty Lang, which confirmed an earlier prediction of the famous detective—that Goulard would sooner or later kill some one.

Nick referred to this prediction when discussing the case with his two assistants that evening, then added:

“Well, we got in our quick work, all right, and saved Padillo and his baubles. He will never be held for killing Taggart. Whether Mantell and his partners in the jewel scheme will be able to hold the prize, or have a moral right to do so, is not for us to consider. It’s enough for us that we shall be well paid for our work. As for Gaston Goulard—well, we shall see no more of him till the East River gives up its dead.”

“That will be never, chief,” declared Patsy. “Never in this world.”

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