CHAPTER VI.
THE LAIR OF THE WOLF.
Nick Carter was not caught napping. Not for a moment since entering the house had he ceased to be alert, with eyes watchful and ears bent upon catching the slightest ominous sound.
Nick had reasoned, too, and very naturally, that Gaston Goulard would visit the house in the ordinary way, by ringing the bell and presenting himself at the front door. Not a word to the contrary had passed between Sadie Badger and Moll Damon.
When Nick Carter turned, nevertheless, upon hearing the threatening interruption, he beheld Gaston Goulard and three men rushing into the room with weapons drawn.
Nick recognized all three, moreover—Ben Badger, one Henry Freeland, known as Knocker Freeland, and a Jack Glidden—all members of the notorious Badger gang.
Nick did not ask himself where they came from, nor how he had thus been caught. Nor was it in his nature to yield submissively to such a situation. As quick as a flash, starting up, he reached for his revolver.
He was not more quick than Sadie Badger, however, who realized on the instant that her earlier suspicions were correct, and that there was something wrong.
She lurched forward before Nick was fairly out of his chair, throwing all of her weight and strength against the edge of the table.
She upset it on the instant, forcing it with desperate energy against the back and hips of the detective, just as he was drawing the revolver from his pocket.
The weapon exploded.
A bullet tore a hole in the floor.
Nick lost his footing and pitched backward over the falling table, nearly into the arms of Sadie Badger.
She was ready for him and threw him to one side, and Nick fell to the floor with a crash that shook its timbers.
In another instant, though the entire sensational episode occupied hardly more than that, Goulard and Ben Badger, with their two confederates, were upon the prostrate form of the detective, crushing his arms and legs to the floor and holding him powerless.
“You lie still, blast you, or I’ll fix you so there’ll be no need of telling you to do so,” Goulard cried fiercely, pressing the muzzle of a revolver to Nick’s head.
“If he don’t, I will,” supplemented Badger, with a knife at the detective’s throat.
Nick gazed up at their threatening faces and permitted his vainly strained muscles to relax. None yet had recognized him, despite that his false mustache had been partly torn from his lips and was dangling over one ear.
Yielding to the inevitable, therefore, for no mortal man could have overcome such odds and such a disadvantage, Nick said coolly:
“Don’t hurry, gentlemen! There’ll be time enough to settle this matter in a decent way. I’m not fool enough to oppose such a bunch of blacklegs. Take your time. I’ll keep quiet.”
Nick had, in fact, more than one reason for doing so.
Goulard snarled an oath, adding quickly:
“By Heaven, this man is Nick Carter!”
“Right,” said Nick; “perfectly right, Gaston Goulard.”
Sadie Badger stared down at him as if dealt a blow. She seemed unable to realize how completely she had been duped, how completely she had exposed herself and her confederates.
“Get his bracelets,” growled Badger, who was the coolest of the gang. “It’s the dick, all right. Run your duke under his coat, Knocker, and get his irons. We’ll soon fix him so he can wag nothing more dangerous than his tongue.”
Freeland hastened to obey, dragging Nick’s handcuffs from his pocket, also the revolver he had partly drawn. He thrust the weapon into his own pocket. Then, with the help of the others, he quickly snapped the handcuffs on the detective’s wrists.
“Now, Glidden, bring a piece of rope,” Badger commanded. “No halfway work for mine. I know this dick from way back. Having got him, I’ll make dead sure to keep him.”
“That’s more wisdom, Badger, than you ordinarily display,” Nick dryly declared, looking up at his swarthy, sinister face. “Make a good job of it, by all means, while you’re about it.”
“I’ll do that, all right, Carter, and I have ample means at my command,” Badger retorted.
“We shall see how ample they are.”
“Is that so?” Badger turned like a flash. “Watch out from the back window, Freeland,” he commanded. “This dick may have more on us than we know for. Make sure you are not seen.”
“That last ain’t necessary,” said Freeland, with a growl while he hurried into one of the back rooms.
Glidden returned at that moment, bringing a piece of rope, and the rascals then proceeded to bind Nick so securely that self-liberation was next to impossible.
Sadie Badger coolly set up the table in the meantime and replaced the articles that had fallen to the floor. She no longer appeared disturbed over learning that this man by whom she had been duped was none other than Nick Carter. She seemed to feel, like her notorious brother, that he had invited his finish.
That none of the gang viewed the matter in any other way, appeared in the freedom with which they began to discuss the situation, without the slightest regard for the presence of the detective and what he might, by some remote possibility, accomplish.
“Now, Sadie, give it to me straight,” said Badger, after Nick had been securely bound. “How did the dick fool you?”
Sadie Badger told him, concealing nothing.
“I’ve exposed the whole layout, Ben, and the bumper that queers the wheel,” she said, when concluding. “There’s nothing to it. We’re up against it.”
“Up against it be hanged,” Badger declared, with a growl. “You’ve told me nothing that cuts any ice. He’s got nothing on us for the job. We’ve got no blood on our hands, nor likely to have any, barring we put the greaser away to get his baubles. See here——”
Badger swung sharply around and confronted Gaston Goulard, who had been grimly listening to the disclosures the woman had made.
“What do you want of us?” he demanded. “Why are you here? What have you got up your sleeve?”
Nick laughed audibly, in spite of his threatening situation, causing Badger to turn and glare at him.
“That’s a funny question,” said Nick. “Haven’t you any brains?”
“Brains?”
“Do you suppose I haven’t sized up this business correctly?” Nick went on. “I can tell you what that rascal wants. He wants precisely what I have pretended to want from the woman. He will tell you precisely what I have told her. I deduced the truth and the probable move that that rascal would make, and I got in my work ahead of him. That’s all there is to it—barring that you caught me in the act. But there’ll be another side to the story,” Nick pointedly added.
“What do you mean by another side?” Badger demanded, scowling.
“Wait and see!”
“You’ll never see the other side of it,” Badger returned, with a growl. “We’ve got you for keeps.”
“Better men than you have threatened me,” Nick retorted.
“They would have made good, too, with as much at stake as we have,” snapped Badger.
“That’s right,” Goulard now put in coolly. “There is only one way to settle this business.”
“What way is that—wait!” Badger broke off abruptly. “You come with us, Sadie. Look after the dick, Glidden, and see that he serves us no trick. I’ll find out where we stand. I’ll darn soon find out where we stand.”
Nick could not hear the discussion that ensued in the back room. That it was along lines already indicated, however, which had shaped his own course and brought about his unexpected situation, he had not the slightest doubt.
Ten minutes had passed when the crooks returned, and it at once was obvious to Nick that they had come to an agreement with Goulard that was satisfactory to all concerned.
The face of the whilom merchant, who had been steadily going to the bad since his financial and social downfall, wore a look of mingled malevolence and exultation that spoke louder than words.
“Now, Carter, my turn has come,” he declared, confronting the detective. “You’ve had your inning, and I’m going to have mine. You did all in your power to down me, but you have accomplished less than what I will hand to you. May the devil get me, body and soul, if I don’t wipe you out of existence.”
“As you did Batty Lang!” snapped Nick, so sharply that Goulard recoiled as if dealt a blow. “Ah, that hits the nail on the head, I see!”
“Little good it will do you to see that,” snarled Goulard, pulling himself together.
“As for the devil getting you,” Nick curtly added; “he’ll get you, Goulard, whatever you do to me.”
“Not before I have balanced my account with you and sent you to——”
“Cut that!” Badger sharply interrupted, turning after a brief talk with Sadie. “There’ll be time enough for that after a shift to safer quarters. We must get the infernal dick out of this house. If his running mates know as much as he has stated, they may come looking for us.”
“That’s right, too, Ben,” put in Sadie. “Shift him from this crib, and be quick about it.”
“Get a move on, Glidden,” Badger added, turning to the other. “Run over to the shed and see Jimmy. Send him with the truck. We’ll have the dick ready in five minutes.”
“And we’ll have the truck here in less time,” Glidden nodded, hastening from the room.
“Fix him so he can’t yip, Knocker, while I open the way.”
Badger also hurried from the room with the last, and Nick heard his receding steps on a back stairway.
With the help of Goulard, who appeared eager for a hand in any outrage upon the detective, Freeland hastened to gag and blindfold Nick, a proceeding viewed with malicious satisfaction by Sadie Badger.
Nick appeared entirely unconcerned, however, and offered no resistance. He wondered where he was to be taken. He knew from the remarks he had heard that it could be to no great distance, and he recalled the several old wooden buildings he had noticed between the house and the river.
“It must be to one of them,” he said to himself. “Probably a more secret retreat of the gang, used in case of need, or a raid by the police. By Jove, I don’t yet fathom how Goulard showed up so suddenly and in company with Badger. Nothing said by the two women denoted anything of that kind. Something must have come off to which I did not get wise. Possibly, Chick or Patsy will succeed in doing so.”
Nick had not long to wait for the contemplated move. He heard Badger returning, and a moment later he was seized by the three men and carried down the stairway mentioned.
The afternoon then was waning. The dusk of early evening was beginning to gather. Another half hour would bring darkness—and what more Nick could only conjecture.
Presently he heard the opening of a door and felt a breath of air from outside. He scented the odor of burlap, a quantity of which was quickly thrown over him, covering him completely, and he again was raised from the floor on which he had been briefly placed.
Nick then was carried only a few steps, however, when he felt himself deposited on a low truck. He could feel it sway slightly on its iron wheels. Then he felt it moving, gliding quickly away, leaving behind him the house into which he had ventured so confidently less than an hour before.