No jungle in the heart of the African desert, no wilds of the Far West, no desert region of the ice-bound North, no corner of the whole wide world, in fact, contains beasts more to be dreaded, more crafty, cruel, and terrible, than those to be found within the precincts of a great city, in the haunts of the underworld, in the lairs and labyrinths of vice and crime.
Close upon four o’clock that afternoon, or about three hours after Nick Carter and his assistants left the Mantell residence, two women met by chance in a certain disreputable section of the East Side, and nearly in front of an inferior hotel restaurant and barroom run by one Barney Magrath.
There was no mistaking their type and character. Their flashy attire, their painted cheeks, the swagger atmosphere with which they met and entered into conversation, told the story in broad-faced type and double-leaded lines.
One was a slender, thin-featured woman with red hair, crafty gray eyes, and a sinister expression.
The other was a more striking woman. She had a fine figure, the better clad of the two, a woman in the twenties, with regular features, dark hair and complexion, a firm mouth and chin. Hers was a decidedly strong and quite handsome face, lighted with eyes that had a habitual searching and defiant expression.
The first words that passed between them, uttered by the woman with red hair, fell upon the ears of a man who was about emerging from the near barroom, and who instantly passed back of the swinging doors and lingered to listen.
“Oh, I say!” exclaimed the woman. “You’re just the skirt I want to see. I’ve been looking for you, Sadie.”
The brows of the listening man knit slightly. He appeared of a type that frequented that locality, a rather sinister-looking fellow with a black mustache.
No observer would have suspected him of being a detective—to say nothing of being the most noted detective of his day.
“The woman herself—Sadie Badger,” was the thought that flashed through his mind. “The other jade is Mollie Damon, a running mate of Slugger Sloan, a holdup man.”
Nick had obtained a momentary glimpse of both women when they halted on the sidewalk, and he had instantly recognized both notorious crooks.
“Looking for me, Moll?” Sadie Badger questioned, sharply eyeing her.
“That’s what, Sadie.”
“What do you want? Are you on the borrow?”
“Nix! Not much! I’ve got coin to burn.”
“What’s up, then?”
“There’s a gent who wants to meet you. He wanted me to find you.”
“Meet me, eh?” Sadie’s eyes took on a sinister squint. “Why does he want to meet me?”
“He’ll tell you,” Moll Damon returned. “I’m not wise. That is, only wise to—whisper!”
She leaned nearer to her companion and spoke with lowered voice, but her sharp aspirates reached the ears of the listening detective.
“It’s about the trick that was turned last night.”
Sadie Badger gazed at her without a change of countenance.
“What trick is that?” she demanded. “Come across plainly. I don’t get you.”
“You don’t, eh?” Moll frowned. “Tell that to the marines.”
“Tell it to whom you like,” Sadie retorted. “It’s all one to me.”
“Well, whether you get me, Sadie, or not, the gent wants to meet you,” Moll insisted. “What do you say?”
Sadie Badger gazed at the curbing for several seconds, evidently sizing up the significance of what she had heard, and the consequences involved in whatever course she might shape.
“Who is the gent, Moll?” she then asked abruptly.
“You don’t know him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Goulard.”
“I never heard of him.”
“That cuts no ice,” Moll declared. “He’s all right. You’d better see him. If you’ll go with me——”
“I guess not! Not if the court knows itself,” Sadie Badger interrupted, with scornful significance. “Safety first, Moll. When I meet strange gents, I meet them where I’m dead sure of having the best of it.”
“I’ll send him to you, then,” Moll Damon quickly suggested.
Sadie hesitated again for a moment, then said curtly:
“You may do that, Moll, if you like.”
“Where to?”
“I’m heading for home. You know where I hang out. Send him there and I’ll see him.”
“I’ll do it,” Moll quickly nodded. “He’ll show up within an hour.”
“All right! I’ll be there.”
The women parted with as little ceremony as they had met.
“Goulard, eh?” thought Nick, having heard every word that passed between the couple. “Goulard, eh? If he shows up before I do, Miss Sadie Badger, he’ll go some. This is too good an opportunity to lose.”
The conversation between the two women had transpired in a very few minutes. The significance of it, in view of what Nick had learned and suspected, convinced him not only that he was on the right track, but also that the work he had laid out for himself and his two assistants before leaving the Mantell residence, the nature of which will appear, was likely to prove successful.
No one had noticed him in the barroom doorway, and Nick presently slipped out and started in pursuit of Sadie Badger.
“She is not acquainted with Goulard, and probably does not know him by sight,” he rightly reasoned from what he had overheard. “If I have sized up the evidence correctly, then, I probably can worm out of her precisely what took place in the Manhattanville house, and possibly learn what became of Padillo and his war prize. I’ll wager I have it near enough to pull wool over the woman’s eyes and loosen her tongue. I’ll take the chance, at all events, regardless of the consequences.”
Nick had no difficulty in overtaking Sadie Badger nor in trailing her to her destination.
It proved to be the end dwelling of a long wooden block in the upper East Side. The end house in which she dwelt was within fifty yards of the swirling waters of East River. The intervening space was occupied with a motley aggregation of old buildings devoted to divers uses. They extended even to the walled bank of the restless river, a large sign on the farthest one bearing the single word: “Lime.”
“Not a savory section, by Jove,” thought Nick, after watching the woman enter the house. “I’ll allow reasonable time for Goulard to have been seen and sent here, and then I’ll tackle the woman and—well, the proof of a pudding is its eating.”
Nick waited less than ten minutes, however, apprehending that Goulard might possibly arrive before he could hoodwink Sadie Badger, and he then approached the house and rang the doorbell.
“I shall hear the rascal ring, of course, if he shows up before I have got in my work,” he said to himself while waiting on the steps. “I’ll arrest both of them in that case and land them where they belong.”
Nick had waited only about a minute when the door was opened by the woman herself, divested of her street garments, and wearing a loose woolen house jacket. She gazed sharply at him, and Nick at once said inquiringly:
“Miss Badger?”
“Yes, I am Miss Badger,” said Sadie, nodding a bit coldly.
“I am the man Moll Damon told you about—Gaston Goulard.”
“You arrive here very soon after my talk with her,” said Sadie suspiciously. “How did she see you so quickly?”
“She did not see me,” said Nick, ready with an explanation. “She telephoned.”
“Ah! Come in, Mr. Goulard.”
Nick entered and followed her into a small rear parlor, divided from that in front by a curtained doorway. Through the broad portière, however, Nick could see that the front room was unoccupied. Listening intently, moreover, he could hear not a sound indicating that other persons were in the house.
Upon taking the chair to which the woman invited him, nevertheless, Nick inquired:
“Do I find you alone here? As you may infer, Miss Badger, my business with you is of a private nature.”
The woman sat down at the opposite side of a small center table, near which Nick had seated himself. She did not reply for a moment. Resting both elbows on the table and gazing across it at him, she then said, with seeming indifference:
“Yes, I am alone here. Contrary to what you say, however, I have not the slightest idea, Mr. Goulard, why you want to meet me.”
“Why, then, did you consent to see me?” asked Nick pointedly.
“Curiosity,” asserted Sadie tersely. “I wondered what you wanted and what you were like.”
“You had no other reason?”
“None whatever. You are a total stranger to me, Mr. Goulard.”
“Very true,” Nick admitted, and he was glad to do so. “Let’s become friends, then, instead of total strangers. It will be to your advantage.”
“Why to my advantage?” questioned Sadie, with brows drooping.
“Because of what occurred last night.”
“Occurred where?”
“In a house in Manhattanville,” said Nick. “Don’t you know? Didn’t Moll Damon give you a hint?”
Sadie scowled impatiently, banging her palms on the top of the table.
“See here, Mr. Goulard, I’m not dealing in hints,” she cried, with some asperity. “If you’ve got anything of importance to say to me, hand it out straight from the shoulder. I’m no riddle guesser. What do you mean?”
Nick saw plainly that the woman was suspicious and inclined to evade him. He was equally sure, on the other hand, that fear alone had impelled her to yield to Moll Damon, which convinced him that she not only knew all about the murders of the previous night, but also was more or less involved in them.
Nick now took her at her word, therefore, and replied, a bit curtly:
“I mean the fight in the house mentioned, a fight in which one of your friends was killed.”
“One of my friends? I guess not!” declared Sadie, still with affected ignorance.
“You’ve got another guess, Miss Badger,” Nick said, more forcibly. “You may as well guess right, too, and hand me straight goods. I’ve not come here to be bluffed, and a bluff won’t get you anything. You know what I mean and the man I mean. Batty Lang is his name.”
“Batty Lang killed, eh?”
“You know he was killed,” insisted Nick, with an affected display of impatience. “I know, too, that he was a friend of yours and of your brother, Ben Badger; also that he was one of the gang of which you two are the big fingers.”
“Is that so?” questioned Sadie tentatively, frowning more darkly.
“Yes, that’s so,” Nick went on, with increasing vehemence. “And that’s not all. I know that Lang and some of your gang got wise to a job I was going to pull off in that house, and that some of you got in there to queer it and get the best of me.”
“We did, eh?”
“Yes. You did it all right, too, as far as that goes, but you’re not going to get fat from it,” Nick forcibly informed her. “I’ve got that finely fixed, you can bet on it, or I wouldn’t be here. It’s safety first for mine, always.”
As may be inferred from all this, Nick was banking on the correctness of his suspicions and deductions, aiming to so impress Sadie Badger that she would enter into a discussion with him and ultimately expose all she knew about the crimes.
Only a detective of Nick Carter’s confidence, one having absolute faith in his own discernment and deductions, would have ventured such a subterfuge as this. It seemed likely, nevertheless, to prove as profitable as he had anticipated.
For Sadie Badger now straightened up in her chair and replied, smiling a bit scornfully:
“You seem to be a wise gazabo, Mr. Goulard.”
“I know what I’m talking about, all right,” Nick informed her.
“You sure are some wise gink,” nodded Sadie sarcastically. “If you know all this and have got things as finely fixed as you say, why have you come here to spiel with me about it? You really think that our gang put up a job on you, do you?”
“I don’t think,” snapped Nick; “I know you did.”
“And we’re not going to get fat from it, eh?”
“No, you’re not—barring you come to terms with me.”
“What terms do you mean, Mr. Goulard?”
“I want a fair share of the plunder.”
“What plunder is that?” asked Sadie coldly.
“Oh, cut that out,” Nick again protested, plainly seeing that he was gradually gaining his point. “You, or some of your gang, have got that Mexican in your clutches, along with the stuff he had in his suit case. Don’t hand me any denial. I know all about it. You got him out through the back door of the house, and Batty Lang was shot while trying to prevent me and my friends from following him, after he had stabbed my pal, Connie Taggart. You got away with Padillo and the stuff he brought from Mexico. I know all about it—and I’m going to have a fair share of it.”
Sadie Badger’s darker frowns showed how deeply she was impressed. She no longer responded angrily, however, but with the earnestness and covert cunning of a woman bent upon learning just what her visitor had up his sleeve. She drew nearer the table, bending over it and saying:
“You do seem to know, Goulard, what you are talking about. Admitting that you do—what do you mean by having things finely fixed?”
“In case anything happens to me while here,” Nick informed her, with unmistakable significance.
“Oh, that’s what you mean, eh?”
“That’s what I mean, all right.”
“But suppose you don’t get what you’re after?” questioned Sadie, narrowly eying him.
“You’ll get yours, then, and the rest of your gang,” Nick declared. “Take my word for that.”
“Explain. I don’t quite get you.”
“That’s done with few words,” Nick went on. “You’ve got this Mexican on your hands. You’ve got to put him away in order to safely keep that plunder. You can’t let him go. He’d have the guns after you within an hour.”
“We might compromise with him,” said Sadie, further convincing Nick that he was shooting straight at the mark.
“That’s not like you, nor any of your gang,” Nick returned.
“As well compromise with him, Goulard, as with you,” Sadie pointedly asserted.
“Not by a long chalk.”
“Why not?”
“Because you know I’ll keep my trap closed,” said Nick. “You couldn’t feel sure of him.”
“Yes, we could,” said Sadie, with an expressive nod. “He wouldn’t dare to squeal. It was he who killed Connie Taggart, and we know it. You’ve overlooked that, Goulard, haven’t you?”
The woman laughed derisively.
Nick silenced her laugh, however, by retorting pointedly:
“No, nothing of the kind. You’ve got nothing on Padillo for stabbing Taggart. He did it in self-defense to protect his property. He had a legal right to do that.”
“Hang it, that’s too true for a joke,” frowned Sadie, biting her lips.
“You see,” Nick added; “you’ll do much better to put the Mexican away and compromise with me.”
“Mebbe so, Goulard, after all,” admitted the woman reluctantly.
“Besides, there is another reason why you should do so.”
“What is that?”
“I am the man who made the job possible,” Nick forcibly argued. “If it hadn’t been for Taggart and me, your gang would never have laid hands on the stuff.”
“That’s true, Goulard, I admit,” nodded Sadie.
“Do you think, then, now that Taggart’s lamp has been put out, that I’m going to be buncoed out of my share of the stuff?” Nick demanded. “Not much! Your gang has got to come across with part of it, or I’ll give the dicks a tip that will make trouble for you. I can do it, Sadie, all right. I can do it and make a safe get-away for my part of the job. That’s what I’ll do, too, unless——”
“Something prevents! Get him, pals! Don’t give him a look in!”
Nick turned quickly.
The first face he beheld, of several, was that of—Gaston Goulard.