CHAPTER VIII.
DRIVEN TO THE WALL.
John Madison had sprung to his feet, uttering a cry, vainly attempting to prevent the lightninglike assault. But it had been made so quickly and with such vicious determination that Nick himself had received not the slightest warning of the terrible blow.
“Good heavens! What have you done? You have killed him!” gasped Madison, when the detective fell insensible to the floor.
Deland turned on him like a flash, with features distorted and murder in his eyes. He whipped out a revolver and thrust its muzzle against the lawyer’s burly form.
“Sit down!” he cried, with a wolfish snarl. “Sit down, or I’ll send you after him. I’m here for business, and you’ll find I mean it.”
Madison shrank instinctively from the deadly weapon, sinking back on his chair, as ghastly with fear and dismay as if the hand of death already had been laid upon him.
“Sit quiet, now,” snarled Deland, still with terrible ferocity. “If you stir, hang you, I’ll send a bullet into you.”
Madison’s only reply was a hopeless groan.
Deland placed his revolver on the chair from which the detective had fallen, face down on the floor, with one arm crooked under his battered head.
Crouching beside him, with one eye constantly on the lawyer, Deland drew up Nick’s coat and got his revolver, thrusting it into his own pocket. Then, fishing out the detective’s handcuffs, he drew Nick’s arms behind him and locked the iron around his wrists.
All was accomplished in a very few seconds, and with the brutal energy and determination of one ready to meet opposition with instant bloodshed.
Rising, Deland then dragged Nick a few feet from the desk, to which he then turned, seizing his revolver and taking the chair from which the detective had fallen.
“Killed him, eh?” he now snarled coldly, fixing his glittering eyes on the ghastly face of the lawyer. “It will be a good thing for you, for both of us, if I have killed him. That’s the only look in we’ve got. If I haven’t done it, blast him, I’ll do it later.”
Madison pulled himself together with an effort and straightened up in his chair. He already knew how lawless and desperate a knave confronted him, but his first flush of fear had subsided.
“Don’t talk of killing, Deland,” he hoarsely protested. “There has been killing enough—more than enough, God knows!”
“And God knows, too, that more may be necessary,” Deland returned, with icy austerity.
“Why do you say that? Why necessary?”
“For your own safety and mine,” declared Deland, with merciless severity. “That’s a clever question to come from you, Madison, after hearing the accusations of this infernal dick.”
“But——”
“Oh, I know what he has been saying and why he said it. I have been listening outside of the window and in the conservatory. Luckily the outer door was unlocked and that in the alcove open, so that I could get in noiselessly. But for that, Madison, it might have been all over but the shouting—all over for you but paying the price!”
“I shall pay no price for crimes which you——”
“Stop right there!” snapped Deland, jerking his chair nearer the table. “You will pay what I dictate for what has been done.”
Madison recoiled involuntarily from the fierce, threatening eyes of the vicious rascal.
“What you dictate——”
“What I dictate—yes!” Deland cut in sternly. “I heard what you finally said to this cursed dick. He had you driven to the wall. You were ready to throw up your hands, to squeal on your pals, to confess the whole business. Do you think I would stand for that? Not much, Madison, not much!”
“But he knows——”
“I don’t care what he knows. We must prevent him from making use of it.”
“Impossible.”
“Wait and see! Twice this cursed Carter has foiled my cleverly laid plans, and twice he has sent me to prison. There shall be no third time—not on your life! I’ve got it in for him good and hard. I will send him to the devil on greased rollers. I will send you with him, Madison, if you balk against my demands.”
“You are quite capable of it, Deland.”
“You’ll find I am.”
“What are your demands?” Madison now asked with a growl, apprehending no immediate violence. “What do you mean by that?”
“You know what I mean.”
“On the contrary——”
“You’ll put over no lawyer’s trick on me,” Deland again interrupted. “Cora Cavendish has been out here, hasn’t she?”
“Yes. She was here two hours ago.”
“Why do you question me, then? She told you what I want.”
“You mean, Deland, that she delivered your message?”
“What’s the difference? I sent her out here to get the first installment you promised us.”
“So she said.”
“The situation now has changed, so changed for the worse that I now want all that you promised us,” Deland added, with sinister vehemence. “I not only want it, Madison, but I’m going to have it.”
“No, Deland, you are not,” said Madison, with more firmness than he yet had displayed.
“What’s that?”
Deland’s jaws closed with an audible snap.
“You heard what I said.”
There was a moment or two of silence.
Deland appeared briefly staggered by the altered attitude of the lawyer.
He was not alone, moreover, in hearing that last semi-defiant remark.
Nick Carter was reviving. Inured to hard knocks, his head had sustained much better than either of his companions suspected the blow it had received.
Nick heard the remark, however, much as one hears in a dream, or the voice of one at a distance. It began to bring him to himself, nevertheless, and with slowly returning consciousness a realization of his position and of what had occurred.
With these came, too, a more keen appreciation of the entire situation, and the cobwebs then cleared from his brain more rapidly. A definite thought had leaped up in his mind, quickly followed by another and another.
“By Jove, I was knocked out. Madison has another visitor. One of his confederates, one of the gang of crooks, showed up here. It is to him he is talking.”
Nick had not stirred—did not stir.
“I’ll wait for more,” was the thought that followed. “I will hear what is said. It may be Deland himself. I can rely upon Chick and Patsy.”
Stretched prostrate on the floor a few feet from the desk, with his face upturned in the full rays from the lamp, Nick had not ventured to lift so much as a corner of an eyelid, lest the movement of it might be seen and rightly interpreted. He continued motionless and silent, as if still dead to the world, and in another moment the familiar voice of Deland fell upon his ears and convinced him of his assailant’s identity.
“Yes, I heard what you said, Madison,” he replied, with sudden ominous coldness. “I heard what you said—but you do not mean it.”
“On the contrary, Deland, I do mean it,” declared the lawyer, more forcibly.
“That you will not settle with me and my pals for what we have done?”
“That is precisely what I mean.”
“By Heaven, then, you shall pay the price in another way!” cried Deland, with renewed ferocity. “You shall meet the fate which—ha! they are here, now. We will see—we will see!”
“You’ll not be alone in seeing,” thought Nick, now comparatively himself again.
A low, peculiar whistle had come from within the conservatory. It brought Deland to his feet on the instant, turning quickly toward the alcove through which he had entered.
Three men now emerged from it, following close on the heels of one another. Though all were well dressed, all were of dark and sinister aspect, with faces that wore the unmistakable stamp of the crook.
Nick seized this opportunity for a momentary glance at them, and he instantly recognized all three as East Side gangsters, as Patsy Garvan had identified them by the names he had heard mentioned by Deland.
“Holy smoke!” exclaimed the foremost, with a glance at the motionless form of the detective. “Is the world coming to an end? How did you get the big dick, Mortie?”
“Plugger Flynn, as bad an egg as was ever laid,” thought Nick.
“I had to get him, Plugger, and get him good,” said Deland, more coolly. “He had Madison on the run.”
“He did, eh?” Flynn glared at the lawyer. “Not going to squeal, was he?”
“That’s what.”
“Hang him, then. I’ll close his trap so he can’t squeal, as sure as——”
“You keep your gun in your pocket, Daggett,” snapped Deland, when he saw the other reaching for a revolver. “There’ll be time enough for that, if it comes to that kind of a play. But we’ve got him so he’ll not squeal, and where he’ll be glad to settle. You’ve arrived just in time.”
“We hiked out here on the run after seeing Cora,” nodded Flynn.
“She told you——”
“The whole business, Mortie,” put in a slender, crafty-looking rascal known as Buck Tobey, chiefly because of his passion for bucking a faro game. “But how did the dick get wise to so much?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Deland. “How in thunder do I know?”
“Does he know about the red liquor? Does he know it came from the skirt, and that I was the one that sprinkled it on the banker? If he does, by thunder, and that you three ginks croaked——”
“Shut up!” snapped Deland. “It now makes no difference what he knows. We’ll fix him so he can make no use of it.”
“That’s got to be done,” Plugger Flynn declared, with a growl.
“And the sooner it’s done, Mortie, the better,” added Daggett, glaring down at the detective. “It’ll be a good job to wipe out this dick. If the rest of his push know too much, we’ll croak them, also.”
“There’ll be time enough for all that,” said Deland, with characteristic assurance. “I first will finish with this infernal squealer and find out where he stands.”
“He’ll settle, by thunder, or we’ll stand him on his head,” snarled Daggett, jerking a chair toward the desk and sitting down. “Get after him, Deland. You’ve been doing the talking.”